


24 frames per second

by Teatrolley



Series: season of hope (after the flood) [1]
Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Discussions of past suicide attempt, Established Relationship, Even season 4, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Even Bech Næsheim, they're so in love guys. so in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-23 01:41:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12495628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teatrolley/pseuds/Teatrolley
Summary: Even wanted to be a director ever since he was a little child. Ever since he first loved a movie, at 12, and realised that making them was something you could do.Even is eighteen when he realises that, however many movies he manages to direct, he won’t ever get to direct the one about himself._________OR: It takes spring and Isak and a reconnecting but, eventually, Even starts doing the thing he never thought he could: recoveringOR: An Even season 4 story, taking place simultanously with the real season 4





	24 frames per second

**Author's Note:**

> this is only, like, several months too late to be relevant but here – have it anyway
> 
> even’s sa is interwoven into this so it’s hard to read without encountering that but, rest assured, i don’t describe how he did it and, anyway, it’s about the aftermath, not the buildup, so hopefully it’s not the kind of thing that feels too unneccesarily torturous to read. still, if you're not feeling too great right now i'd recommend avoiding this
> 
> also: there’s therapy in this and while i’ve taken psychology classes and been through cbt i’m not a professional and you should therefore take that part of this with a grain of salt
> 
> and that’s all. enjoy your reading

Even wanted to be a director ever since he was a little child. Ever since he first loved a movie, at 12, and realised that making them was something you could do.

Even is eighteen when he realises that, however many movies he manages to direct, he won’t ever get to direct the one about himself. It’s written already:

You’re ill, and it’s going to kill you. And, before it does that, it’ll control your entire life.

_________

ACT ONE  
_________

**Lørdag 17/12/16**

He doesn’t realise he’s been sleeping his whole life until he sees the boy.

He’s laughing in the hallway of Even’s new school with a curly-haired friend who’s beautiful, but who has absolutely nothing on the laughing boy. The golden, halo-edged, fresh breath of him.

Even _has_ to know him, so he will. And then he does.

It’s a mess, at first, but Isak keeps giving him second chances he doesn’t deserve, like he’s worth getting to know despite all of his mistakes and, later, he realises that he got something wrong about Isak the first time around. He looks shy and he always touches gently and his grumpiness doesn’t really reach that deep, but his anger does.

Even never accounted for the anger.

It’s not directed at him. Never at him. Just at everything else about the world. And it gives him this:

A boy who’s determined, period, in everything he does. A boy who brings him fresh toast again and again and again even if he doesn’t eat it, just in case he will. A boy who keeps talking to him like he’s really there, even when he’s watching the world blankly. Who looks at him with intensity clinging to his eyelashes like drops of rain and says, _it’s important to me that you know that I didn’t mean what I said in that locker room and that even if I did, it wouldn’t have been true_ , and who says, _in this minute we’ll kiss_ , and then actually scoots over and does it. 

Even doesn’t feel much better at love than he did when he was fifteen, but he feels it, intensely, anyway.

So now they’re here, in late December, in Even’s bunk bed, sharing the same duvet and the same breath.

“Hm,” Isak says, smiling, like he always seems to be doing lately.

They’ve been kissing, and Even is warm in the nice way, hand on Isak’s jaw, and _happy_. Happy, not in the way that’s slipping through his fingers before it’s even begun, but in the solid way, deep-seated in his stomach right next to the arousal that’s beginning to set in, too. The bed creaks below them when he leans in close to kiss Isak again, and Isak tugs him in closer and invites it when Even’s thigh slides in-between his.

There are things you only know about people you’re in love with. Like how the skin at the balls of their toes matches the hue of their cheeks, when they blush. The skin at the balls of Isak’s toes matches the hue of his cheeks, when he blushes. 

Even is jealous of everyone who got to know him before he did, even his mother.

“Hm,” Isak says, again. “I can’t believe you finally want to have sex again, and then we can’t even do it, because of this noisy fucking bed and your parents being right next door.”

“Finally?” Even asks, and knows that he’s still got some time to go before he’ll feel familiar with the butterflies fluttering right behind his ribs again.

“Mm,” Isak says. “It’s part of my contract.”

“What is?”

“Sexual favours. At least three times a week.”

Even laughs out loud, like Isak always makes him do.

“Oh, shit,” he says. “I didn’t realise it was a prostitute arrangement.”

“Yeah,” Isak says, grinning now, too. “You thought you were Richard Gere?” Even stills, just a little. “Sorry to break it to you, but out of the two of us you definitely make a better Julia Roberts.”

“Isak,” Even says. Pulling away enough to watch it, Isak removes a strand of hair from his forehead, and there’s that determination again.

“I googled it,” he says. “White limo tesla.”

Even had a good childhood, so when he was a little boy he always found it weird when adults said sorry for things they didn’t do. He didn’t understand guilt until the time he accidentally broke his mother’s favourite record, but then he got to know it like he knows the freckles dotting his cheeks.

He knows it even better now. He likes that Isak looks at him and doesn’t see a bad guy, but that doesn’t change the fact that that’s what he was. His parents raised him well. It’s always come easy to him to be kind, and as soon as he got the ability to, he vowed to keep doing it. None of that makes it mean any less that he used to hurt people by getting them stuck in his mess and letting them love him, knowing that they did, but trying to extract himself from the world anyway.

Probably, that’s one of the things that wormed its way in-between Sonja and him, before they were even old enough to understand that guilt does that, sometimes, and grief does, too. Perhaps they’d have worked out, if it hadn’t been for that. Perhaps they wouldn’t. Perhaps all that knitted them together, in the end, was the fact that they were united in fighting the same thing: Even’s illness.

There’s no way to know, he thinks. All he knows it that he loved her once, but that it started to feel like he had to come back to her with a down-to-the-minute breakdown of his day every evening just to get her calm enough to talk about something other than his illness, and that it made him want to pull away enough that he should have done it long before he did. Love and complacency are not the same thing. Neither are love and comfort.

“I’m sorry,” he says, now, inadequately, but Isak looks straight at him and rolls his eyes. So: “Okay,” he says, smiling a little despite himself. “I’m not sorry?”

Isak chuckles, even now. His fingers brush over the shell of Even’s ear when he cards them though his hair again, and it seems like it wasn’t an accident.

“You can be sorry for making me google stuff all the time,” he says, like an offering.

“Oh?”

“And making me watch stuff all the time.”

Even finds himself smiling some more.

“You watched it?” he asks. Isak nods.

“Yeah. Between when I called you and when you texted.”

Once, when he was younger, he was upset with his dad for something so silly that he doesn’t even remember it now, and asked his mum why she ever fell in love with him. _At first because he was beautiful_ , she’d said. _And then because he had this fire within him, like he refused to back down from anything that mattered to him._

He looks at Isak, and then he leans in and kisses him, softly, because it’s the best way he knows how to say thank you without also saying sorry. When he pulls back, Isak is looking fond.

“That’s all I can be sorry about?” Even asks. “Nothing else?”

“No,” Isak says. This time it’s him who leans in so they’re close. “Nothing else.”

**Torsdag 15/12/16**

There’s a day before the Christmas party, after Even has started feeling better but before he deems it necessary to go to school, where he, none-the-less, gets out of bed with Isak in the morning. Isak has a shower. Even goes to the kitchen.

“Look at that,” Eskild says from the kitchen table, when he sees. He’s wearing the robe he’s always wearing, it seems, from what Even has seen. “James Dean, up and out of bed.”

“James Dean?” Even says. He raises his brows. “If I’m James Dean to you now, you should see me when I’m really trying.”

“Down, boy.”

Even snorts, rolling his eyes, before turning his back to Eskild to go into the fridge.

“Anyway, I like you,” Eskild says, behind him. “You don’t try to deal with your shit in isolation like the rest of these children. I’ll tell you, it’s very hard to take care of people who resist it like it’s devil-sent.”

“Well,” Even says. Not finding anything good in the fridge, he straightens and turns back to face Eskild. “Don’t give me too much credit. I would have, too, it’s just… Isak.”

Eskild smiles at that, and it looks fond.

“Yeah,” he says. “Isak.” They both nod, as if he’s just said something profound. “Stubborn boy.”

“Very.”

“Hm,” Eskild says. And then: “You’re doing him a lot of good, you know.”

Even grimaces. Isak’s been coming straight home that whole week, and Isak’s been looking tortured when he’s looked at Even and gotten little to no response. Isak’s been bailing on school, and Isak’s been getting his heart broken, and Isak is tough, that much is clear, but Even should have never made him have to be in the first place. He should have been more careful.

“No, you are,” Eskild says, still. “You hurt him, a lot, and I’m not one to forgive stuff like that easily, but you clearly care about him.” Even nods. “And I don’t think you realise how much change you’ve inspired in him, and inspired him to make.” Even watches him. Eskild lets him look. “So,” he says. “Anyway. It’s not too late to make this what you want it to be.”

It wouldn’t be fair, Even realises that. It wouldn’t be fair, in any sense of the word, if he were to up and leave now, after everything they’ve been through, but he’s hurt so many people, and he’s hurt Isak, again, and again, and again. It wouldn’t be fair, and he’s absolutely sure that Isak would never forgive him for it. But it would be done, then, it would be it: The last bad thing he ever did to him.

It’s not until Eskild says what he says in the kitchen that day that Even decides that he won’t be that big of an asshole. That he’ll never again take a choice like that out of Isak’s own hands. It’s not until Eskild says that, that he realises this: there’s still time to turn it around.

“Can I borrow your eggs?” he says, “to make him breakfast?” and Eskild grins.

“Yes,” he says, so when Isak comes into the kitchen, damp hair and changed outfit, smelling fresh and sweet, there are three portions of scrambled eggs waiting for them.

“Ah,” he says, seeing it and smiling. “Return of the prodigal eggs.”

“Yeah,” Even says, and hands him his. “That’s the next movie.”

“Next?”

“After _Underwater_.”

“Oh–” Isak breaks off into an eye-roll and a grin. Somewhere behind him, Eskild leaves the room. “Very funny.”

“I’m a comedian.”

“Hm,” Isak agrees, and then, looking at the eggs, before getting to his toes to press a brief kiss to Even’s temple: “Thank you, by the way.”

“For you.”

“Special occasion?”

“Do we need one? Maybe I’m planning on making this a regular thing.”

Isak raises his brows. “Oh, really?”

“Hm. I could make you lunch, too.”

“Oh.”

Isak’s smile turns shy and he looks at his feet, like he still does sometimes. It’s one of the things that makes Even’s whole body scream with the urge to take care of him, because someone as sweet and delicate as this deserves to know just how much he’s loved, always.

“What?” he asks.

“No, it’s just– No one’s made me lunch for a very long time,” Isak says, and _goddammit_ , if that doesn’t make Even want a little bit to cry and very much to give him everything.

“I will, then,” he says.

“Yeah?” 

“Yes. Of course. I’ve got you.”

If Even was only going to keep one promise, in his whole life, he thinks, it would be this one. It would. Because something in the way Isak smiles, first at the floor but then, resolutely, at Even, tells him how important this is.

So, by God: if this boy wants him to stick around, then he will.

**Onsdag 28/12/16**

They spend their whole Christmas holiday together.

He meant it, back in the beginning when he’d asked if he could just stay in here, in Isak’s room, forever. He didn’t like it when he didn’t have a choice, that dark week or so where Isak’s roommates checked in on him, once in a while, because Isak, the sweetest boy in the world, had asked them to. He didn’t like it then, but he likes it now, when it means getting to cup Isak’s cheek with a palm with nothing scary looming in the future, threatening to tear them apart. 

Isak loves being kissed, and Even loves kissing him, and they can do it all day before, slowly, _there’s_ that atmosphere that makes them both pull back to grin at each before they dive back in, this time finding hems of shirts with fingertips and tugging them free.

He gets to know Eskild, who knocks on the door to Isak’s room a couple of times a week, teasingly checking if they’re ever going to come out but, in another sense, probably actually checking if everything is alright, too. He gets to know Linn, who he sees something of himself in, and who looks like she should be shy but isn’t, not at all. And then there’s Noora, who sometimes seems to be locked in an even greater battle of annoyance with Eskild than Isak is, but who always makes tea for all of them when she makes some, and who seems to notice enough to know when to tease and when to stay silent.

Every morning at around ten he takes the first pill, and every evening around six he takes the other. He doesn’t have to hide it from Isak anymore, so he doesn’t, and, either way, it’s so nice to be around someone who stares at the bottle intensely, not because he’s counting how many are left and doing the math of it all in his head, but because he loves biology and wants to know what is in these things that his boyfriend puts inside his body every day.

“You’re so sweet,” Even says, and watches his cheeks turn a dusty rose pink. 

With all of this, Sana is becoming harder to ignore. Not that he wants to ignore her, since he likes her and all, but there are still things he hasn’t told Isak, and doesn’t know yet how to voice. Either way, she and the rest of the girls come over one evening, after Christmas and before New Year’s, and Even coaxes Isak out of his room for her, so she can use it to pray. It makes Isak narrow his eyes at him in that confused way of his, but it makes Sana smile and nod out her appreciation, so it’s worth it.

“What’s the story here?” Isak asks, leaning against the kitchen counter as they wait for his room to be freed again.

“What’s the story?”

“Well, she didn’t say anything, you just knew.”

“I have an app,” Even says. Fishes his phone out of his back pocket, even, and hands it over after scrolling through it, so Isak can see. “See? If you’re going to hang around her, you should get it to.”

“Okay, mum.”

“It’s polite.”

“Hm.” Isak is distracted, turning away from him, delighted grin on his face, as he uses the app’s compass function to find Mekka. “Look,” he says. “Now I’m ready to pray.” He’s sweet, and Even grins. Isak hands him his phone back. “Anyway, you have that app why exactly? Just because you’re the most considerate boy walking this earth, or?”

“Yeah, that’s why.”

“Just so you can feed your Messiah complex?”

“Mm.”

Even kisses him, teeth on teeth and all of that because they’re smiling, and Isak wraps his fingers around the collar of Even’s shirt and gets on his toes, when Even pulls away, to kiss him one last time like he just can’t not.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “I was just curious.”

Even wants to tell Isak a million things. Like, _you make life seem so bright_ , and, _I think about you all the time_ , and, _I trust you so much that I’d trust you with anything_ , and it’s true, even the last part, but that doesn’t mean he’s able to say it out loud. He wants to say, _you weigh bigger than my guilt and my shame_ , but he’s not sure that that’s true, too.

It’s the way in which he frames everything, he knows. Like the opening shot of the movie, it’s the overarching theme he’s carrying around in his pocket all the time: the way he’s ill and the things that will do to him and the people he loves.

“You can ask,” he says, and he can, but it’s still the kind of things that break people to hear, and Even doesn’t want to break Isak anymore. “You can always ask.”

“So?”

“Mikael is Muslim, too,” he says. It’s not everything, but it’s some of it. Isak’s face shifts just slightly, like he’s taking it in.

“Is he really the first man of your life?” he asks, but there’s a flirting tone to it.

“No,” Even says. “Kind of. But not really.”

Isak nods. His hand cards through Even’s hair, just behind his ear.

“Jonas was my _kind of_ ,” he says. “I mean, not really, you know? He was just there.” Even nods. “And unobtainable, which is really far more easy to deal with, if you’re in the closet, than having to come out.”

Even laughs.

“Don’t I know it?” he says, and thinks, _would you look at that_ , and thinks, _I wonder what else we can find out we have in common_. Isak laughs, too, and then leans in to him, shifting, so they’re no longer just standing close, but embracing.

“Anyway,” Even says. “What will I have to do to get you to tell me again?”

“Tell you what?”

“That _I’m_ the man of your life.”

Isak laughs, into his chest. Pulling away, he lets their eyes meet.

“ _The_ man of my life?” he says. Even presses their foreheads together, so the tips of their noses touch.

“Mm,” he confirms, and watches Isak’s eyes go soft, honeyed around the edges and melting.

“You’re the man of my life,” he says.

Even kisses him.

He has a puzzle, inside of himself, too, of Isak. It’s part of love, he thinks, wanting to know everything about him and wanting to keep getting to know him forever, keeping up with all the little changes that will come and go.

So he understands: understands the way Isak lights up with gentle pleasure whenever Even gives him something new. And someday, he vows, he will give Isak everything, but not yet. He’s still trying, is the thing, just a little bit, to pretend like it didn’t actually happen at all.

**Torsdag 5/1/17**

They spend New Year’s together, too, and Isak fixes Even’s tie in the bathroom and calls him baby before they go to the party that Eva is hosting. Isak gets drunk, and Even doesn’t, but Isak kisses him right there, in the middle of the room filled with all of their friends, and it’s the best New Year’s Even has had in a very long time. When the clock strikes midnight he kisses Isak, this time, and then they hug, the two of them, and then the five of them, and then a mix of them, because they’re all drunk and they’re all happy.

Come January and the first day of school Even thinks his back is a little straighter than it was before, as he stalks up to Isak’s locker, leans against the wall of the rest of them, and fixes him with a teasing smile.

“Hey, baby,” he says.

Isak is grinning when their eyes meet.

“There you are,” he says. “Wanna see something cool?”

When Even nods, Isak turns the lock on his locker to the right combinations, and grins at Even as it opens without a single complaint.

“You’re the master of opening lockers,” Even says, and watches it with a smile on his face when Isak rolls his eyes. After he’s gotten his stuff out he reaches out to take Even’s hand and then he holds it, all the way to the cafeteria where they meet up with the boys.

“There they are,” Magnus says, when they arrive, looking at their hands. “NRK’s favourite couple. How’s it going?”

“NRK?”

“It’s Mags, he thinks he’s really funny,” Isak says.

“I _am_ funny,” Magnus says, as they slide into the boot and let go of each other’s hands, fishing out their lunch instead. Then, to Even: “Listen to this: Isak and Even, minute by minute. Wouldn’t you watch that?”

Jonas has hidden his face in his hands.

“How much have you told them?” Even asks, watching Isak send Magnus a look.

“Too much, clearly,” Isak says.

“Dude, you would have never gotten mutually laid if it hadn’t been for Jonas’s dating advice,” Magnus says

“Alright,” Jonas says, raising his head from his hands to change the subject, but Isak’s cheeks have already gone dusty pink and Even has already started laughing. “ _Anyway_. Are we going to meet up somewhere to play FIFA after school?”

“If you’re going to change the subject,” Magnus says, “at least change it to Vilde and I. Guys, I haven’t told you yet, but she stayed over after New Year’s the _whole day_.”

“Wow,” Jonas says, as Mahdi says, “Nice.”

“See?” Even says. “Desperation seems to be working for you.”

“Yeah,” Magnus says. “Thanks, man. I think she really likes me back, you know?”

“Ask her over, we’ll give you a second opinion,” Mahdi says.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Isak says, this time. “She can have lunch with us, can’t she?”

“Okay.” Magnus fishes his phone out of the pocket of his jacket, hanging on the stool behind him. “Now I’m shy,” he says, and everyone laughs. “If she’s coming here, you guys have to behave, you know.”

“Us?” Isak says, incredulously, as Mahdi says, “You’re the one who never behaves, dude.”

“Alright, whatever,” Magnus says. Isak rolls his eyes and when Even catches them he smiles, a private little thing, as if, at the end of the day, it’s the two of them that go through life together, observing and becoming amused by everyone else. Even likes it. Sometimes he’s said something and watched Isak catch Jonas’s eye and smile as if the two of them are amused by _Even_ together, and he likes that, too; to be the object of Isak’s contemplation.

“I’m going to call her,” Magnus finishes.

The rest of them spur him on, and under the table, Even feels Isak’s leg bumping into his. It’s winter outside but that’s okay, because in here it’s warm, and because winter makes Isak wear beanies that make him look soft and big coats that make him fit perfectly into Even’s arms.

“Do it,” Even says, and chuckles with the rest of them when Magnus stumbles over his words as he does.

*

He remembers it very clearly – the first time he saw a boy and thought, _oh, he’s pretty, too_. He must have been around ten when it first happened with a girl, but that was expected of him, so the clarity with which he remembers it is less. He’s thirteen when it happens with the boy. It’s April, and a Monday, and something blooms within him as the world blooms outside of him, too.

It’s not that kissing Mikael starts the spiral. It just pushes it beyond the point of no return.

After he’s done it, Sonja tells him he’s sick, and while she’s right it’s not like mania makes him want to do things he doesn’t already find appealing. For a while he doesn’t know if she realises that, or if she’s roping that entire desire in and placing it under the definition of illness, too. Later, he will realise that she just meant the mania, but by then it’s already too late. His Facebook has been deleted days ago, and he’s been wearing a hospital gown for a while. She couldn’t have known then, but it’ll turn out to be the worst thing she ever tells him.

When he was younger and thought of loss, he didn’t think to pair it with responsibility. The Bakka boys all kept calling him for a long time after it happened. They even called him the day of his exams, when he didn’t show up. It was him who didn’t pick up. So when it comes to loss, his and theirs, there’s really no doubt about it: this time, the blame is all on him.

In the hospital, they weigh you every day just to keep track of your health. Even always thought the scale tipped too low for him. It forgot that guilt is like lead, even small quantities heavy enough to break the bones of your shoulders and ruin the soles of your shoes.

Even, though. Even never forgets.

**Fredag 10/2/17**

There’s a month, and then another one, and Even thinks that they’re a bit like memory-foam pillows, him and Isak, shaping around their lover’s head to hold him properly and coax the stress out of him.

It’s the kind of thing you do in December, but December wasn’t all that kind to them this year, so they do it in early February instead – they go ice-skating. Even can skateboard, and Even can ski, so he can damn well ice-skate, too, but Isak. Isak probably hasn’t had nice family things for a while, and Isak might not have had much incentive to get Jonas to go skating with him, so Isak, Isak, Isak: Isak has to hold onto Even’s hand the whole time.

They skate with their gloved fingers intertwined until their ankles hurt and it turns dark around them, and then Even buys the two of them cups of cocoa from the stand by the rink.

“We should go on date nights more often, if it gives me chocolate,” Isak says, and Even grins.

“You have a moustache,” he says. Isak’s eyes are glistening, and his lips are curled back in a smile hiding the rim of cocoa-covered skin when he finds Even’s eyes and winks.

“Sexy, right?”

“Definitely.”

“Wipe it off, then.”

“Hm?”

“If I have a moustache, wipe it off,” Isak repeats, lifting his chin to give Even better access. He’s the sweetest thing.

“Oh,” Even says. He takes his glove off first, and then he reaches out, index finger curling under Isak’s chin as the ball of his thumb wipes the cocoa off. Their eyes meet when he’s done, and he can see in Isak’s amused eyes that he recognises it, too, the fact that in the movie of them this is where they kiss. _Oh, well_ , Even thinks, _if the script says it_ , and steps in close.

“We’re in public,” he says. “Can I?”

Isak nods, so he does. His whole face is cold, but Isak’s lips are warm and, after a moment, the inside of Isak’s mouth is, too. The whole time he’s holding onto Isak’s chin. 

It’s the first time, really, that they’ve kissed in public. When they pull back, they’re grinning. And then, as if it was planned, they shift, arms and chests moving, nudging together, until they’re holding each other tight, chests against chests and hearts, aligned.

“Thank you for today,” Isak says, into his ear. Even rubs his back a little with his free hand, not holding the cocoa. “It’s been good.”

It was their first week together, the one before the episode, when Isak, after Even had taken him out for dinner, had hugged him tight in his bed and whispered, _I really like doing things with you_. Even doesn’t know why but it had touched him, deeply, and he’s vowed ever since to always plan little dates for them, because anything Isak likes, Isak should get.

“It has been, hasn’t it?” he says now, softly.

“Yeah,” Isak agrees, and kisses his cheek, so he kisses Isak’s temple back. They pull out in the embrace, just enough for their eyes to meet. “You must like me very much.”

Even realises which scene in the movie this is now. Slow-dawning, he grins, and then he chuckles, watching Isak grin the same.

“I more than like you,” he says, and Isak’s grin widens.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Lucky,” Isak says.

“Lucky?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Even thinks Isak is going to repeat his words back to him, but he doesn’t. He makes them different. He smiles, and presses their foreheads together, and holds onto the hoodie of Even’s coat with his free hand, and he speaks:

“I love you,” he says.

Even doesn’t know how to be anything but a mess yet, and sometimes it seems like there’s a journey in front of him that he needs to take and hasn’t even taken the first step of, but Isak. Isak looks at all of that, and everything he knows, which is a lot, even if it isn’t everything. He looks at all at that and he says the words anyway.

“Lucky,” Even says, and Isak laughs, loud and warm and happy.

“Go on, then,” he says. Even leans in closer.

“You think you know what I’m going to say?”

Isak looks at his lips. “Yeah, I think I know what you’re going to say.”

Even kisses him, kisses him and kisses him and kisses him.

“I love you,” he says, and half an hour later Isak’s back hits the mattress of his own bed.

Flash cut to the two of them, giggling, as they both work to get Even’s shirt off. Flash cut to their mouths, sliding together, and flash cut Isak throwing his head back when Even kisses down his neck. Flash cut to the moan Isak makes that turns into a quiet hum of laughter, flash cut to bodies against bodies and heavy breaths and Isak’s hands, everywhere.

Flash cut to Even, smiling into Isak’s mouth and thinking, _oh_ , like he always does. Thinking, _oh. So this is love._

“Minute for minute?” he says later, brushing the hair out of Isak’s face. Isak flutters his eyes closed and offers a lazy smile.

“Minute for minute,” he says. “In infinite time.”

**Onsdag 1/3/17**

So they love each other and, God, there’s so much past in the both of them, strung out and taking up space, nudging them in certain directions without letting them know, but there’s that. The fact that they love each other.

Even is an only child. His mum is a linguist, and his dad is a middle school teacher, and he’s always had a great relationship with both of them. Still, in February he turns twenty, and while it doesn’t have to happen _right now_ , he’s beginning to think that it’s time to move out of his family home.

He’s sitting in Isak’s bed, on his laptop, scrolling through a list of Oslo dormitories, while Isak is lying on his stomach next to him, feet in the air, thumbing through his Biology textbook. His free hand is placed possessively on Even’s inner thigh. They work, next to each other, in a comfortable silence.

After a while, Isak closes his book with a dull thud, and shifts so he’s joining Even, leaning against the wall. Their sides press together.

“Still looking?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Even says. “Listen to this: Fifteen square metres. Seven thousand a month. You don’t even have your own kitchen, just a sink and an electric portable stovetop.”

“Shit,” Isak says.

“Yeah.”

“That’s a lot to pay and only be there half the time. _This room_ is a lot to pay, to only be here half the time. At least when my dad stops paying for it.”

“What are you saying?” Even asks. “That it’s silly to spend money living two different places if we’re going to be travelling back and forth to spend our days and nights together anyway?”

“That it’s going to be expensive, at least. But, yeah.”

“So we should just stick with the arrangement we have now, then?”

“Yeah, or…”

“Or?” Even asks, when Isak doesn’t go on. But Isak is looking away, looking shy, and it dawns on Even what he means. He smiles. “Or we might as well just shack up together, the two of us?”

Isak shrugs. “Mightn’t we?”

“We might. But, Issy. Leases can be, like, two years long.”

“So?”

“So, nothing, just– That’s awfully serious, isn’t it?”

Isak raises his brows. “You’re the one who spoke of weddings a week into being official.” He’s joking, and Even snorts.

“In my defence,” he says, “I _was_ manic.”

“So you take it back?”

Isak has fixed him with a look, teasing and amused, and he already knows this conversation is entirely pointless, because as soon as Isak suggested it, something settled deep within his stomach. Something, like the feeling of stumbling over exactly what you needed for everything to feel just right.

“No,” he says, and Isak grins.

“No?”

“No.”

“Alright.” They’re both grinning now, staring into each other’s eyes until, suddenly, Isak’s eyes break away and he reaches out for the computer in Even’s lap, sitting there forgotten in the midst of it all, tugging it towards himself. “Can I?”

“Of course.”

“Okay.” Isak opens a new tab, and begins typing away. Even watches the profile of his face, fascinated; watches him lick his lips and settle into concentration, that little frown of his finding its place between his brows. “Drop the dormitory, I refuse to do that. Together I’m sure we could afford an apartment–”

“Isak,” Even interrupts him.

They kiss, because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re happy, and you want to share it, and that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re in the mood to spend half an hour or so doing nothing but being together and making each other feel good. Because it’s the kind of thing you do when you’re in love and finding that words are wholly inadequate to express the complexities that come along with every part of your soul saying, _him, and him, and him, and him_ , like a record of affection on repeat, because that’s the kind of thing you do when you don’t know how to say, _I like the way my heart looks, nestled in the palms of your hands._

It’s not the last conversation they have about it. They talk about his illness, too, because it has to be talked about, but when they do, Isak gets that determined look on his face again. The one that tells Even that Isak weighed all of this up a long time ago and has already made the decision.

“So, wait,” he says, and takes the laptop back just to tease, clicking onto IKEA’s website and angling the page away from Isak’s prying eyes until he’s found what he was looking for. He turns it around. “Should we put the order in, then?”

Isak laughs, loud and clear and happy.

“Funny,” he says, but moves the laptop away and shifts around, to kiss him. From his nightstand, the open page still shines at them.

On it, is a pair of yellow curtains.

**Mandag 10/4/17**

Monday’s in April are the epitome of new beginnings, for Even. Always have been, ever since that boy. So, is it really a surprise, then, that it’s a Monday in April when they move in?

There are talks first, of course. Budgets, and medicine, and Even’s parents’ numbers encoded in Isak’s phone, just as Isak’s is encoded in Even’s, twice. Once under _mannen i mitt liv_ , and once under _in case of emergency_ , next to his mum and dad’s. It’s a lot of responsibility for a 17-year-old boy, and Even worries, of course he does, but Isak rolls his eyes about that and says, “I’ll want to know, won’t I?”

And maybe he’s right; maybe it’s as simple as that.

The boys help them move in, boxes up and down the stairs, IKEA manuals, and all. There are beers, then, and pizza, and Jonas teasing them when Isak declines an invitation to the skate park on Saturday because they _have to go flee-market hunting._

“My old room was never meant to feel like a home,” he says, later that evening, when Even asks him about it. “But I want this to.”

It means more than what’s on the surface, Even knows. It often does, when Isak speaks. He wants to spend his whole life learning to hear it, so he tries here, too, and listens to the way it says, _the two of us, together, building something – that’s what I want._ Listens, and then kisses him, trying to make it says, _me, as well, me, too_.

Everything is going well, for a while. He gets a job at Kafffebrenneriet, he’s well on his way to graduating, nothing in his way this time, and every night he gets to go home and cook while Isak sits on the counter. And then he gets to crawl into the bed that they own together, and hold him.

It’s a part of his illness, thinking good things can’t last. The problem with realising that is that, most of the time, it turns out to be true.

A month after moving in Elias hits Isak hard enough to break his nose, and Even is left with blood on his hands.

**Fredag – 12/5/17**

Isak might be the one who was hit, but Even thinks he’s the one who’s in shock. He expected his past to catch up with him. He has expected it, all this time. But he never thought it would be like this: a white, stark waiting room, and Isak being carded off by a nurse, on his own, to somewhere Even can’t follow.

“Here,” Jonas says, touching his shoulder and handing him a bottle of water, just bought from a vending machine, and Even almost laughs, because this is _ridiculous_. This is not supposed to be about _him_. “You look pale.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I think I’m panicking a little bit.”

“Yeah, I think you’re panicking a little bit, too.”

Even likes Jonas, likes this matter-of-fact approach to stuff. He remembers that Jonas is Isak’s oldest friend. He takes the water.

“Thank you,” he says.

“No problem.”

He drinks. It calms him down a little. So he drinks again.

When Isak comes out, what feels like much later, it’s with ice to his nose and an eye that is beginning to turn purple and yellow around the edges. Even gets up and goes to him, immediately.

“Can I see?” he says, urging Isak’s hand off his face, and Isak lets him, wincing a little when Even touches his chin to turn his bruise towards the light. “Shit. Does it hurt?”

“A little,” Isak says. “They gave me some painkillers.” He holds up a bottle of them. “Can you hold them? I don’t have a pocket–”

“Yeah, give them here,” Even says, and takes them when Isak hands them over, putting them in the pocket of his jacket. “Silly boy. You almost gave me a heart-attack.”

“It’s just a black eye and a nose-bleed.”

“Nose broken. Didn’t they have to tug it back into place?”

“Yeah. But–”

Even shakes his head, smiling. Isak smiles, too.

“Silly boy,” Even repeats, but cards his fingers through Isak’s hair. “Makes you look tough, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Hm. Tips you higher up the bad-boy scale.”

Isak laughs, and then he winces, like it hurts. Even reaches out immediately, touching his face even though it does nothing, and they both smile a little at each other. This is fragile ground. This is bones, weak from panic, and the two of them: trying their best to find their way back to a steady heartbeat, together. Finding his cheeks with his palms, Even leans in and presses a kiss to each of Isak’s eyelids and tries to ignore his rising urge to cry.

“Can we go home?” Isak asks then. “I think my body’s been in shock. I’m really tired.”

“Yeah,” Even says. “The boys are still in the waiting room, but we’ll just make it quick. I’ll call a taxi.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.” Even squeezes his shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

He realises, then, that his body’s decided to ignore his brain and has started to make tears well up in his eyes, even though he told them not to. Reaching up to wipe them away with his thumb, Isak tilts his head with a smile, and Even snorts back, rolling his eyes at his own silliness.

“No need to cry,” Isak says, rubbing a thumb over his cheek, tenderly. “It’ll only be a month or so before the black eye is gone, then I’ll be hot again.”

When Even laughs, it comes out more like a sob. Isak wipes more tears away, before Even removes his hands to hug him, instead. It helps a little, on the ache in his chest, for the two of them to be this close.

“I’m not crying,” he says. “It’s just the shock.” Isak snorts, and rubs his back.

“Yeah, it’s just the shock,” he says. When Even pulls out of the hug to rest their foreheads together, careful, for once, not to let their noses touch, he’s smiling. “I’m fine, baby.”

“I know,” Even says. “Genuinely, it is just the shock.” Isak shakes his head, rolling his eyes and smiling fondly.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Hm.”

“I love you.”

This time, it’s Isak who cards his fingers through Even’s hair, fixing some of it behind his ear. God. Even closes his eyes against it, keeps them closed, until Isak gets onto his toes and kisses his forehead.

“I know,” he says. They hug, again. “I love you, too.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.” For a while, they stay in the embrace. Then Isak pulls away. “Anyway,” he says, wiping a finger under his own eye. “Enough of this PDA. Let’s go home.”

“Yeah,” Even says. He takes Isak’s hand, intertwining their fingers. “Let’s go home.”

They do. But that night, when Isak’s fallen asleep with his hand twisted in Even’s shirt and his head on his chest, Even pulls out his phone and scrolls all the way back in his camera roll. He never could get himself to delete these pictures. Of him, with other people. Of him, with Mikael and a camera; him, with his arms around Elias; him, in-between Mutta’s and Adam’s embrace; him, playing basket with Yousef; them, at the dinner table of Sana’s house, Yousef, Mutta, Adam, Elias, Mikael. The people he used to love.

It’s catching up to him. Keeping secrets might be going out of the window now.

He looks at Isak’s sleeping, slack face, listens to his soft snores, and puts his phone away. There’s this song on the Bon Iver album they listen to sometimes, this song that Even’s always loved without listening to the lyrics, but then one day, he does. _Someday my pain,_ it says. _Someday my pain, will mark you._

The first time Isak listens to the lyrics he gets that determined look on his face, as he reaches over to change the song.

Even is starting to think he may need more help than just that.

_________

 ACT TWO  
_________

**Tirsdag 16/5/17**

Isak is the first person he tells.

In fact, he brings it up with Isak before he’s even made a decision, wanting his imput before he does. He’s never done that with anyone before, not since he began having the choice and the ability to do things on his own, should he need to. He supposes maybe that says something.

It’s the Tuesday after the fight.

It’s lunch, and they all laugh together about Isak’s new look. Jonas says, “You look better with it than I did last year,” and Isak says, “So you’re not going to start the Yakuza fights two point o for me?” and they laugh about that, too. The whole time Even has his arm around Isak’s shoulders, and Isak leaning into him.

Then it’s afternoon, and he goes to work, preparing smoothies and ice-teas more than he does coffees, because it’s spring, and the weather is looking up. Then it’s evening, a little past six, and he is closing up the shop when Isak comes to pick him up, knocking on the window and drawing him a heart. Then it’s home, just the two of them, laughing in the kitchen as Even makes them food and Isak talks to him from the counter he’s sitting on.

“You know,” Even says, when there’s a lull in the conversation. “I’ve been thinking of going back to therapy.”

He’s a movie guy, but there’s this poem that he read in class once at Bakka, _we are seven_ , and he thinks of it sometimes. The strangest part of Even’s childhood was that he’s a brother without really being one. He had a sister, once, a twin, but she died in the womb. She’s still there though, and _it’s_ still there, his brotherhood, invisible, like the threads of the lives his parents had before him that are long gone now. The threads that he’s never seen, but that he still notices in the things they say, the memories they have, the way they hold themselves. It’s like loss, in a sense. Like someone lost is still there, in the ghost in the bottom of the stairwell and in you. In the ache right below your last rib.

Even’s sister is not the only invisible person inside of him. The Bakka boys are there, too. Them, and everything he did that broke them apart.

“Oh,” Isak says. When Even turns to look at him, he’s not doing anything. Just watching, gentle expression and all. “Why?”

“I just think,” Even says, hesitating. “I think there are things I still need to talk about.”

“Okay. Mysterious,” Isak says, smiling, placing a palm to Even’s shoulder, skin warm through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. Even snorts. “More?”

“I will tell you one day, you know. Anything you want to know.”

Isak smiles, shaking his head. “Just not right now?” he asks, saying it like he’s repeating Even’s words back to him. He is.

“Is that okay?”

Isak nods. “That’s okay.” They share a smile. This patience, like you wouldn’t believe: Even is still just getting used to it.

“Thank you,” he says. “You’re so nice.”

“The master of being nice?”

Even laughs. Isak joins him. They laugh together.

“The world wide champion.”

“Oh! Impressive.”

“Yeah.”

“So is there more?” Isak asks.

“I mean, besides the fact that I want to be proactive so that you don’t get caught in the middle of something bad– don’t say you can take care of yourself, I know.” Isak closes his mouth from where he was getting ready to speak, and they share an eye-roll and a smile. “Then no.”

“Okay,” Isak says. “Sounds smart.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Can’t hurt, either way, can it?”

“No,” Even agrees.

“No.” Isak nods. “You should do it, then.”

“You support me?”

Isak smiles.

“Yeah,” he says. “I support you.”

> **Mikael**
> 
> Onsdag 22.32  
>  Hi Even. I didn’t know you were going to be at the party on Friday. If I did I would have said something to you before coming. I’m sorry. I hope the guy you were with is okay. I don’t know if you’re together, but it looked a bit like it. If you are, you look good together. I’m happy for you
> 
> Onsdag 22.54  
>  This is Mikael btw. I don’t know if you’ve still got my number saved
> 
> **Even**
> 
> Onsdag 23.27  
>  Of course I still have your number saved
> 
> I’m sorry about the fight. I hope you’re okay, too
> 
> Torsdag 02.34  
>  And we are together
> 
> His name is Isak

**Onsdag 24/5/17**

On Wednesday he talks to his parents about the therapist business, and, in the quickest turnaround of the century, because they can afford to go private, the following Wednesday he has his first appointment.

Mikael starts texting him the day that he and Isak have their talk. Even texts him back the first night and, the little over a week between then and the appointment, Mikael’s texts don’t stop.

Here’s what he tells his therapist about it. Here’s everything he has to say: _I’m bipolar and, about a year and a half ago now, I had the worst episode of my life. It ended with me in the hospital_ , and here is the big part, here is the part where he says something out loud that he’s never dared voice before: _It ended with me in the hospital, having tried to kill myself._

They had a therapist at the hospital, too, and a psychiatrist, but Even was angry, then, and not willing to listen to anyone about anything, so the moment he had gotten his pills and gotten out, he never looked back.

He does now.

It’s just an introduction, the first time. It’s just the two of them, him and Marie, as she’s called, getting to know each other. Getting to know his goals.

And here’s the other thing: He used to think he’d be able to escape it. That he could move on, never look back, and maybe they’d never have to talk about it again. But Isak is asking questions that have answers he deserves to know and Mikael’s texts are in his phone again, burning in the palm of his hand, and he needs– What he needs, he says, is to bring it back up from the darkness and into the light.

She agrees, and gives him a mood-sheet, standard procedure, before he’s back out the door.

Isak picks him up.

“What are you going to tell her about me?” he asks, on their walk home, their intertwined hands swinging between them.

“That you’re the best rapper in Oslo,” Even says, just to see him laugh, and he does. “That you don’t appreciate my movie-reference-making genius enough.”

“That I’m only with you because your mum pays me?”

Even laughs. “Where _is_ that money in our budget, by the way?”

“Personal pampering.”

“Oh?”

“Hm. You thought I looked this hot naturally?”

Even stops him with a tug of his hand, right there on the street, underneath the yellow light of one of the streetlamps, and pulls him in, hands on his cheeks, to kiss him. He’s in love, is the thing.

“I did, actually.”

“Oh.”

Isak kisses him back and there they are, the both of them, sharing smiles on a night-time deserted street, making out. Isak’s eye is still blue, and Even thinks about scars, and pasts, and doing the right thing so, that night, when Mikael texts him again, asking him if they could maybe meet up, he says yes. 

And then he tells Isak about it.

**Torsdag 25/5/17**

They meet up at this basketball court they used to visit together a lot, per Mikael’s request.

Even doesn’t know what he’ll be in for, with this. Will meeting up just start a new fight? Will it change absolutely nothing, because everything that happened looms too large? Or will it be the rekindling of their friendship that he’s been looking for, in the part of him where hope lives. The part of him he forbade himself from looking at, after everything that happened, and the part of him he hasn’t dropped into outside of Isak, yet.

If Isak sees life in multiple universes, then Even sees it in movies, but right here maybe those two things are not so far apart. It’s the turning points that form the script. Maybe Even is about to figure out where his will go.

The sun is still high on the sky when he sees him.

He looks exactly like he did the last time. He’s even wearing the same white, jacket, the same haircut, the same everything. But everything else is not like it was the last time. Mikael used to run up to him, like he just couldn’t wait to be near him now that he was within reach. He’s not running anymore, but, Even thinks, at least he’s still coming closer. 

No one really talks about how it’s sometimes just as hard to lose a friend as is it to lose a lover. Even thinks maybe Mikael and him didn’t really belong in any of those categories, in the end. Maybe they were somewhere in the middle.

“Hi,” he says, instead of saying that and, for some reason, Mikael looks at him and grins.

“Hi,” he says and, then, before Even knows what’s happening, they’re hugging.

*

Even was always fascinated by his mum’s work when he was younger. She’s a linguist, spending day in and day out translating and talking about translating. Here’s the thing, she always told him, little kid him with scratches on his knees, hardly able to sit still. Here’s the thing: Translation is in everything we do. When I speak to you, I have a meaning in my head that I try to mould into words; words which you hear, and mould back into a meaning in your head that might be different from mine.

Movie-making is a little bit like translating, too, he thinks, and not just when it’s about putting a script to screen, no: movie-making is about taking experiences and translating them into a movie-language that other people will understand and, sometimes, if you’re lucky, understand deep in their core.

Talking to Mikael now, Even thinks, feels more like translating than it ever did. Maybe that’s another side-effect of almost-loss, besides the guilt. Becoming unable to say the right things out loud.

“So,” Mikael says, after they’ve found their way out of their hug and onto a nearby bench instead. They’re sharing a blunt, back and forth, and if nothing else at least this unites them in something. If nothing else, they have until the stub is turned out. “So, how are you? How’s your mum?”

Funny, this, Even thinks, how things will fit together.

“My mum,” he says. “Oh, yeah. You always did have a thing for her.” They share a smile, and Even is wise enough, now, to see it for the outstretched hand that it is. “She’s fine. Finished that book she was working on.”

“ _On the nature of translation_ , or whatever its name was?”

“Yeah,” Even says. Except now it has a foreword about grief.

“Cool.”

“Yeah. She asks about you sometimes.”

“She does?”

“Yes.”

“What do you say?”

It’s not true. She doesn’t ask about him sometimes. She did. But then she caught Even looking through his Facebook in the week before he started Nissen, only half of it visible because he wasn’t logged in. He wondered, then, wondered whether he’d be able to see much more had he not deleted his profile. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Mikael would have blocked him.

Either way, after seeing him looking, she’d suggested he call, but he had rolled his eyes and said, _as if_. It had left her with this pained look on her face she still gets sometimes, and wore a lot right after it happened. Even is not an idiot. He can imagine. It must be tragic to go through the birth of a child only to see him wind up miserable.

Anyway, the point of it all is this: she never asks again.

“Not much, really,” he says now, and it’s the farthest from the truth he can be without lying.

“No,” Mikael says. “Well.”

“How’s your mum?” Even asks, to change the subject.

“Good, too,” Mikael says. Then, with a smile, as if they’re still good enough friends to have private jokes: “Asks about you sometimes.”

“Oh,” Even says, smiling, too. “And what do you say?”

“That I miss you.”

Maybe he does this to people, or maybe the boys he falls in love with are all of the same type, because, right then, Mikael looks just like Isak does when he’s serious about something.

“Really?” Even asks. “Even when–”

“I texted you,” Mikael interrupts, and it seems like they’re doing this. “You can’t say I didn’t try. I tried–”

“I know–”

“I tried a lot.”

“I know.” Even looks at his hands. “I’m sorry.”

“For which part?”

“Everything?” He’s frustrated, now. “Take your pick. Are we really going to talk about this?”

“Yeah, maybe. Shouldn’t we get it out of the way?”

“Really, Mik? One conversation and it’ll be gone, do you really think that?”

“You didn’t even give me a chance to have a say. You just cut me off, completely, even though we were best friends. That really hurt, first of all,” Mikael says.

“There’s a second of all?”

“There are many of all’s, okay?” Mikael says, and Even almost smiles, _God_ , even in the middle of this he almost smiles. “Like, for one,” Mikael goes on, calmer now, “the fact that you didn’t even tell me that you were sick.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.” Even shakes his head. Takes a drag of the blunt and hands it over. “It came as a surprise to me as much as it did to you. Well, almost.”

“Almost?”

“They thought I had ADHD when I was younger. You remember, I told you that. We talked about it.”

“Yeah, we did. But it’s… bipolar. Right?” He says it like he’s testing out the word, like he hasn’t said it much before. “That’s what Sonja said.”

Even swallows when he nods. “Yeah, it’s bipolar,” he says.

“Okay, well.” Mikael smiles a little, almost like it’s funny. “I guess I’m not mad about that part, then.”

“You’ve been mad at me this whole time?” Even asks, but amused, too, not broken.

“That’s a compliment, okay? Do you think I go around bearing grudges for people I don’t like?”

“You’re too kind to me.”

“Yeah, well, don’t say that too soon.”

“There are more of all’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Hit me,” Even says, and it’s so tragically _easy_ to fall back into this kind of banter, despite all of their past, like really they are platonic soulmates, like they used to joke about together. It’s so tragically easy, which is why the next part hurts a lot:

“Okay,” Mikael says, like he’s gearing up, “well,” and now his face has hardened again. “There’s the fact that apparently you wanted to kiss me enough to do it while manic. Which is not the bad part, because, contrary to what you were very willing to believe about me, I’m not actually homophobic. No. The bad part is that, not even a year earlier, you’d looked me straight into the eye, on camera, and said that love stories are only good if someone dies in the end. Flash forward a bit and you’re apparently in love with me and then you try to kill yourself and tell me, _Even_ , in what world does that not leave me with the blame?”

It’s like something breaks.

This is why they were careful before, like everything felt fragile. This is why they were walking around like they were in a papier-mâché house because this: this is what’s behind the walls if you let them fall.

Even doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.

“Do you remember doing it?” Mikael asks, entire jaw clenched and voice dangerously low, like Even has never heard it before.

“I–”

“Do you remember doing it?” More forceful, now.

“Yes.”

“How did you do it?”

“Mik, please–”

“How did you do it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“I can find out from Sonja.”

“Then find out from Sonja.” Even’s voice is frustrated now, too. “I’m not going to tell you, okay? You’ll just replay it in your head.”

“You think I don’t replay it in my head already?”

“Please, Mik–”

“Please, what?”

“I know what I did, okay?”

At this Mikael laughs, humourlessly. “Oh, you do?” he says. “You could have _died_ , Even, you could have been dead right now– _Fuck_ –”

He breaks off. Even realises, startlingly, that there are tears in his eyes.

“I said I wouldn’t do this, you know,” he says, calmer now, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. Between them, the blunt has been stubbed out, without any of them noticing it. “I said I wasn’t going to freak out on you and here I am.”

“I’m sorry–”

“Elias says I should be more understanding–”

“Mikael,” Even interrupts him. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Mikael looks at him and then, suddenly, he looks startled. “Fuck, don’t cry,” he says.

“You’re crying.”

“We can’t both cry.”

Even laughs, tears and snot and sobs everywhere and, like a miracle, Mikael does, too.

It’s not planned, but it could have been, the way they find each other’s arms in a hug, like old days. Like nothing has actually changed at all. That group of boys was always tactile, but Even hugged Mikael first, and it was the first time since he was a child he’d hugged another boy. Even back then, he’d needed it. Maybe that was why he developed the crush.

He needs it now, too, and it’s been a long time since Mikael’s been the one to give him what he needs, but he used to, a lot. They were, really, the best of friends. Towards the end Even would sometimes forget about that, too caught up in his own teenage-hormone emotions to look beyond them and see much else, holding their friendship in his palms like dying people in movies are held: gently, now, ready to let go. But they were more than that. They were best friends.

“I missed you so much,” he says, even though he vowed not to put Mikael in that position, but Mikael: Mikael is the same kind of kind to him that Isak is, exactly the kind that he doesn’t deserve, and Mikael says,

“Then maybe you should stick around, this time.”

Even pulls away, dries his eyes, and watches him. “Really?” he says. And Mikael rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, really. I want my best friend back.”

“Your best friend?”

“Yeah, well. It’s you who always said your sister is still your sister, even though she’s dead.”

It’s so sad and so petty and gives him so much hope, despite all of that, that Even laughs. “Fuck,” he says. “That was a good one.”

“Right?”

“Yeah, that really hurt.”

“Good.” Mikael, who’s had more tears leak out of him, dries his eyes again. Even does the same, noticing the ache of it sitting in his forehead, right behind his skull. “I don’t plan on being an asshole forever, you know. It’s just all very raw, still.”

“You can be mad, it’s okay.”

“Oh, you have no idea, though. There was a moment, right in the beginning, where I really thought I was going to go to your house and have to kill you myself.”

“What about heaven?”

“I would have given heaven up to kill you.”

They laugh and then they hug, again, and this time none of them cry.

“Thank you,” Mikael says then, into the embrace.

“Thank you?”

“For calling the ambulance.”

 _Oh_.

For some reason, it’s the only part of all of it he really refuses to think about at all. Maybe it’s just the horribleness of it all. That, despite everything, despite walking straight into death with open arms, there was still something in him, something desperate, that pleaded to get to stay alive.

“It’s kind of dumb, isn’t it?” he says.

“Maybe,” Mikael says. Then pulls away, looking straight into his eyes as he speaks: “But, Inshallah, be dumb for the rest of your life, then. Do anything you fucking have to do if it keeps you alive.”

*

Isak is sleeping when he gets home, so he’s quiet, as much as he can be, when he changes out of the day’s clothes, meticulously, and goes to brush his teeth. After, he takes the night pill and, for the first time in a while, looks at the bottle of them, not with annoyance but with gratefulness. Before leaving the room he turns the tap on, collects the water in the palms of his hands, and washes his face with it. A baptism.

The mattress dips when he crawls into bed, and it makes Isak stir. Their balcony door is open, and outside cars drive by, but in here it’s just the two of them. It’s that type of summer twilight it is right before it’s dark, where every puff of air feels nice on your skin, like water when you’re thirsty, or a lover’s touch. The whole thing oozes calm. Isak’s hair falling in his face and over the pillow, him on his stomach, breathing deeply, one hand hidden underneath the pillow and the other curled gently in on itself on the sheets next to him.

“Hi,” he whispers, voice croaky, and lifts the curled hand from the sheets to Even’s chest, up under his shirt, skin on skin. “Missed you.”

“Missed you,” Even says and Isak, sleepily, smiles. “You smell nice.”

“I just showered.”

“I can tell.”

Isak flutters his eyelids open. Even thumbs the corner of his smile. Then his eyebrow. Isak watches him.

“Did it go okay?” he asks, and Even never thought he’d be able to answer that question with a nod, but: he can.

“Yes,” he says, “It went really well.”

Isak smiles once more. There’s a softness to him, sleep in the corner of his eye, everything warm and tender. “Friends again?” he asks.

“Maybe,” Even says. “Getting there. Perhaps we’ll need a couple of platonic friend dates to test it out first.”

Isak snorts, softly, rolling his eyes. “Platonic friend dates? Where do you come up with these things, honestly?”

“You don’t think I sound clever?”

“Oh, sure you do. If clever and ridiculous are synonyms now.”

Even pretends to be more offended than he is, and Isak giggles. Even loves that sound. He loves Isak, _loves_ him, so he pulls him onto his chest, as close as he can be, and cards a hand through his hair in that way he likes enough to make his eyelids flutter closed. They do now.

“You’re very funny,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Hm.”

It’s true that Even was the one to call the ambulance.

Before he’d been guilty he’d been angry. Angry about his own pathetic urge to hold onto life, angry that he couldn’t even do dying right.

He’s always been a movie person, but in the months after the attempt he read and listened to every gay thing he could find, too, obsessively enough that Sonja convinced herself he was manic again, but he wasn’t. He just needed something to tell him that it would be okay. That he was okay. And then, somewhere buried deep in a play he remembered them talking about at Bakka but never really read, he found something that resonated with the other part of him. The part that still wanted a little bit to die.

It went like this, it went:

”But still. Still bless me anyway. I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life.”

It didn’t change his life, but it stirred at something within him, awoke the part of him that’s awake now, the part that’s saying, _fuck this_ , that’s saying, _I’m going to take these shitty cards I’ve been dealt, these shitty things that I’m dealing with, and I’m going to turn them into something good because, fuck it, I deserve a good life as much as everyone else and if I’m going to have to do it myself then, dammit, I will._

_Lord knows I’ve done enough things on my own anyway. I can damn well do this, too._

It was the first time he’d wanted to recover so much he knew he’d do it.

The thing about bad things are that they happen drastically, and the thing about good things is that they take their damn time coming but, that evening, Even looks around at his life, at Isak in his bed, at him almost graduating, and realises that this is what it looks like: being on the way. That evening, he looks around and realises this:

If nothing else, he’s glad he made the call.

**Fredag 26/5/17**

The day after he’s having a shower after work when Isak’s key turns in the lock and announces his coming-back after walking Sana home. A moment later, there’s a knock on the door.

“I’m home,” Isak calls to him, from outside.

“Hi, baby,” Even calls back. “Come in.”

Isak does. “Hey,” he says, once he’s inside. Even lifts a hand above the shower curtain to wave at him. “Good day?”

“Hm,” Even confirms. “Better now you’re here. You?”

“Better now I’m here,” Isak says, and Even smiles to himself. “I got an email from Netflix about how– You know that guy who did the Facebook movie?”

“Yeah?”

“Another one of his movie’s are on there now, Netflix thought we might like it. It was the one with the seven deadly sins, which sound kind of gross, but we could give it a try.”

“Movie night?”

“Yeah. And if it’s bad we could just watch Moulin Rouge again.”

Even laughs. “You like that one.”

“I like watching you watch it.”

“That’s so sweet,” Even says. He ducks out behind the shower curtain, to send Isak a smile. Isak smiles back, sitting on the edge of the toilet seat, turned towards him. “You’re very sweet.”

“It gets you in the mood, so…”

Isak raises his brows, and Even winks. They laugh together. When he ducks back under the shower-spray, Even is grinning.

It makes him want to not say it. They’re happy, and he’s tired of bringing things that aren’t happiness into them, tired of looking at Isak and hearing all the songs that say something like, _I’m sorry, my darling, but I’ll hurt you very much_ , and hearing them on repeat. But he has to. And Even is used to wanting ridiculous things, like boys he’s only seen once, or dying, but he has to learn how to be sensible. He has to. So:

“Anyway,” he says, “can I burst the bubble a little?” and eight minutes later he’s sitting on the edge of their bathtub in just a towel, Isak standing in-between his thighs looking solemn and angry and sad, and he’s done it.

It’s amazing, he thinks, incredible, really, how quickly you can change a mood.

Here’s what actually went down, back at Bakka. The undiluted version. Here’s what really happened, and here’s what he tells Isak, that night, as the coldness of the bathroom tiles seeps through their socks to their feet.

First, he started spiralling. Statistically, bipolar comes out between the ages of fifteen and thirty. He was eighteen, and it wasn’t the first time it happened, but it was the first time it happened like that: with that kind of volume and that kind of collateral damage.

He’d known Mikael for years then, and liked him for about one, but without the aid of mania he doubts he’d have ever done anything about it. The thing about the situation, though, is this: mania _was_ there to aid him.

So, first he started spiralling. And then he kissed Mikael.

“I’ve honestly blocked out most of it,” he says, to Isak, now. That’s another thing. Mania means that it’s all clouded in a hue of imprecision. Did Mikael push him away that day? Or did he just say no? Did he look angry, or did Even just interpret it like that, drugged up on rejection and everything else? “Either way,” he goes on. “He didn’t react in kind.”

He knew about Islam before he knew the guys, and he got to know even more about it later. He never tried to take any of it on, just stood on the side-lines, observing, so when it came down to it he thought maybe that was where he needed to look, look closer, for once, to find the answers to what had happened.

He asked Yousef to help him. To teach him the Arabic he needed to learn the Quran. Later, he realises that’s probably the worst thing he did to the boys out of all of them. Because it wasn’t until he looked there, that he really started breaking.

He says this now, too.

“It wasn’t kind to me,” he says, to Isak, holding his wrist like a treasure because it looks like he’s beginning to cry. And he does, just a single tear dropping from the bottom of his eyelashes, when Even goes on: “It wasn’t kind to people like us.”

Isak sniffs, and wipes the tear away, without carefulness.

“Too much?” Even asks.

“No,” Isak says. So Even keeps going:

“You asked me once why I didn’t have a Facebook,” he says. Isak nods. “I deleted it, after. I was at the peak, by then, and reading all of this stuff. In secret, too, apparently. I don’t really remember. But anyway, I… I started posting all this stuff, on the Revue page. There are probably screenshots somewhere, I don’t know.”

“Stuff?” Isak asks.

“Well, passages. From the Quran. Quite dramatic, really.”

Isak smiles, just a little, even though his eyes are still wet.

“They were about…?” he prompts.

“Being gay? Yeah.” Isak nods. “And not good.”

More tears. Isak is touching him, now, his shoulders, his neck, his cheeks.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “You always seemed so out.”

“Well,” Even says. Reaching up, he brushes Isak’s hair out of his face, and leaves a palm on his cheek. “Anything, for you.”

He knew it would make more tears fall, and it does. This time, he’s the one to wipe them away, trying to be gentle, as Isak stays in his grasp, hands on his shoulders, meeting his eyes.

“So what then?” he says, steadfast, like he knows already that the answer will break his heart and is willing Even to say it anyway. “What happened next?”

Even is the one to look away then, retracting his hands, but Isak: Isak grabs them before they can land in his lap, and puts them back to his own cheeks, holding them there, until Even glances back up to meet his eyes. Isak assesses him for a moment, and Even lets him, letting the answer to his question shine through in his face as much as he can. Anything not to say it.

He doesn’t know how Isak always manages to say the right things. How Isak always manages to decipher what it is that he needs. But Isak’s face shifts then, not into sadness but into a clenched jaw, determined, as he keeps Even’s hands on his own cheeks, nods once, and says,

“You can’t escape your own thoughts. The only way out is to die.”

He wishes he could say no. He wishes he could say that he doesn’t remember anything before waking up in the hospital. But it’s true. He remembers all of it, every single excruciating detail.

“Yeah,” he says, and it’s not until then that Isak’s face crumbles.

“Were they mad at you?” he says, and it’s a whisper, voice broken like this whole situation is. “Because they shouldn’t–”

“No–”

“They shouldn’t have been mad at you.”

“They weren’t mad at me,” Even says. “At first I guess they were confused, but… They kept reaching out. It was me who–”

“Couldn’t pick up the phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Isak says. Okay, he says, and then he’s touching Even’s cheek, _desperately_ , so Even gets to his feet and puts his arms around him.

They stand there, holding each other, and it hurts. There’s no way around it. It hurts enough that a few tears leak from Even’s eyes into Isak’s curls. Enough that he feels like his body isn’t enough to contain it.

It had, honestly, back then, it had hurt more than anything to lose his friends. His dad always said he was a loving person, quick to open up to strangers as a child, and quick to love all of the boys, the moment he met them. He loved them, he really did. Loved all of them, with his whole heart, like he loves Jonas, Mahdi and Magnus now. It tore him apart to lose them.

It tore him apart even more that it wasn’t just them. It was Sonja, too, slipping away from him, and his parents, feeling further away than they ever had before, riddled with grief. He’d been lonely. He hasn’t thought a lot about it. It’s been too heavy and too hard. But now that he no longer feels that way he can look back, and recognise the feeling for what it was: loneliness. Desperate and insistent, like a heartbeat. Never leaving his side.

People talk about a lot of different kinds of pain, but no one really talks about loneliness, and what it can do to you. He was surprised, then, to find out that what would come to rattle his bones with exhaustion most prominently, that what would come to break his body from the inside out, and do it the most thoroughly, would be that: feeling alone.

“You know you can talk to people, right?” Isak says now. “You have me, and our friends, and your parents, and– and a professional, now.”

“I know,” he says, and he does. God, it’s been a battle to get here, but he does.

“And it’ll pass,” Isak goes on, edged a little with desperation. “Right? It always passes–”

“I know.”

“Okay–”

“I won’t do it again,” Even says, and he means it. He wouldn’t dare. He can’t stand the thought of Isak being scared he would.

“No?”

“No,” he says, promises, and then Isak is pulling out in his grasp and pressing their foreheads together. Even wipes his tears away with his thumbs, but they keep coming. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry,” Isak says. He’s holding Even’s cheeks, and Even is holding his. “What are you sorry for?”

“Making you sad?”

Isak shakes his head, caressing Even’s cheeks, and Even thinks he’s better than anyone deserves.

“How many times are we going to have this conversation, huh?” Isak says. “I know when I’m hurt more than you do. Okay?”

Even smiles, despite himself. “Okay.”

“Alright.”

“I didn’t realise this conversation would end with me being told off.”

Isak smiles, snorts, and then, in tandem, both of them reach out for each other. They hug, again. They hug like they did when Isak came for him, running, and Even is beginning to realise that Isak probably knew, even back knew; knew enough to figure out that it could have been a suicide note. That, even though he didn’t have a plan, maybe it was.

He called the ambulance himself and he was angry, for months he was nothing but angry, but he’s always been grateful that no one else found him. He’d never have forgiven himself for that.

“Can I be sorry for December?” he says.

“What about December?”

“The text.” They pull apart, to look at each other. “You thought I was going to–”

“Yeah, I did,” Isak says. A pause, then: “Were you?”

“I don’t know.” Even hesitates. “I mean, no,” he decides, then. “Not when I’d sent you that, I couldn’t. I couldn’t have fucked you over like that.”

“You decided to spare me the trauma?”

“Yeah,” he says, but _fuck_. The people he hurt. The people he could have hurt. The way his mum looked, broken, when he woke up in the hospital bed, and the way his dad never really stopped crying. The way Sonja changed after that, emptier and angrier and even more adamant than before to never not know where he was. There’s no way to make it different than it is: he could have ruined them forever. He kind of already did. “I’m sorry I ever got close.”

“Okay,” Isak says, for once just letting him say it. They look at each other, and he smiles. Even nods. “You never went to therapy about it?” Isak goes on.

“No, I did. Just not for very long, so–”

“Yeah.”

They nod, together. It’s over. It’s out, now, and Even knew how much it was weighing on him, but he’s still surprised that he feels lighter, now, and not, like he thought he would, worse. Not, like he thought he would, like the cracks of him are starting to come back, but like they’ve been acknowledged, now, and they’ve moved further on. They hug, again, and when he kisses Isak’s temple Isak kisses his back, and says, “Thank you for telling me.”

It’s 21:21. As he always is, Even is reborn.

Later that night, when they lie across from each other in bed, tears are leaking out of Isak again, but he’s smiling, and he’s letting Even wipe them away with a thumb.

“I didn’t cry about my dad leaving until I’d been living in my room at Kollektivet for a month,” he says, to explain it. “It’s a delayed reaction thing. You have to be strong when you’re in it, so… you don’t cry until afterwards.”

“Are you okay?”

Isak nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Or I will be.” Even nods, too. “Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.”

Isak glances at his lips, so Even holds his jaw with his hand and scoots over, across their different pillows, and kisses him softly. Isak hums into it, both of them closing their eyes, and it’s nice. He tastes salty tonight, Even thinks, on top of warm, the residue of everything still soaked into his skin. When he pulls back, he grimaces just for show.

“What?” Isak says.

“Snotty.”

“Oh–” Isak pushes him away, palm to his face, then tugs the pillow from beneath his chin and hits him over the head with that one, too. “Shut up.”

“Hm,” Even says, laughing, and it feels so good to laugh, especially when Isak joins him. “But it’s true.”

“Oh, it’s true, is it?” Isak says, and tugs him in by the arm, laughing, until Even’s lips are on his again, and his hand is back on his jaw. They keep kissing, for a long time, and when they stop, Isak is no longer crying.

“Great Friday, this,” he says, after, but he’s carding his fingers through Even’s hair, softly, looking fond.

“Hm,” Even says, quietly, eyes dropping closed. He’s tired, now. It’s late. The atmosphere around them has shifted to something gentle and pleasant, and Even didn’t know they could end up here, of all places, on a night like this. “Did I keep you from your one true love?”

“Which is?”

“Beer.”

Isak snorts. “Yeah, you did, actually.”

“Oh, no,” Even says.

“Yeah, oh, no,” Isak says, shifting on the mattress so it dips beneath them, before lifting Even’s arm and crawling under it, settling onto his chest. Even lifts a hand to draw patterns down his back. “Guess you’ll have to make it up to me.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. No more art-house movies for a year?”

Even smiles. “What if I make art-house movies, what will you do then?”

“Learn to lie, I guess.”

They both laugh, together. Even opens his eyes just long enough to find Isak’s forehead, and kiss it. He keeps them open, watching Isak, listening to his heart, saying, _thank you, my darling, thank you; thank you for the kindness of your love._

“You’re looking at me like that again,” Isak whispers.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re memorising me.”

 _Like you’re still thinking the only way to keep me is to lose me_ , it means. Even smiles a little, brushes Isak’s hair out of his face and wants to promise him everything, but especially to promise him that that’s not true anymore.

“Force of habit,” he says. But Isak shifts to meet his eye, holding his cheeks.

“You don’t have to lose anything, okay?” he says. “You’re going to survive this, and I’m going to survive this, and we are going to survive this, and in just a few months we’ll be somewhere we could have never imagined.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. How do you?”

“Well.” Isak smiles, gently, fixing the hair behind his ear. “A year ago I never could have imagined this.”

Even’s smile dawns on him slowly. Then it’s big.

“No,” he says. “Neither could I.”

**Onsdag 31/5/17**

“So,” his therapist, Marie, says, a few days later, sitting across from him in that well-lit, clean-smelling, nicely-decorated therapist room. “Let’s talk about guilt.”

He once read a poem that said that resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Guilt, he thinks, is a little bit like drinking poison and being so afraid that it will start affecting the people you love that you drink the rest of the bottle, too, and then turn up in the 24-hour shop to buy a new one.

“Guilt is not a bad emotion,” Marie tells him now. “No emotions are bad, they’re just emotions, that’s the first thing. Guilt, in particular, is a tangent of empathy, so in theory it’s good that it’s an emotion you’re familiar with. It shows that you notice the effect you have on other people.”

Even nods.

“Can you give me an example of when you think you feel guilt in a healthy way?”

“Oh–” Even snorts. The therapy he went to at the hospital was much more acute. It was behavioural. This, he’s unused to. “I guess– Actually, my very first memory of feeling guilt is very clear.”

“Yeah?”

“My mum had been away on, I don’t know, a conference or something? I was maybe six. And, anyway, I wanted to welcome her home by playing her favourite record, this original Fleetwood Mac one. But, in my inexperience, I accidentally scratched it. I felt _so_ bad.”

Marie smiles. “And what happened then?” she asks.

“Well. I said I was sorry, and… probably cried.” They both chuckle. “And then she… said it was okay, I think? And it– that was it.”

“Yes,” Marie says. “Good. The thing about emotions, you see, is that they have a purpose in our everyday life. Sometimes emotions are more about the social interactions we have because of them than they’re about us. Some of them are even taught. Guilt is, actually, one of the ones that we maybe don’t only teach children, but at the very least encourage in them, because we in the current world rely on and value empathy. We need it if we’re to exist in a society together with a bunch of other people.”

Again, Even nods.

“Can you tell me what you think the purpose of guilt is?”

“I, uh–” He pauses to think. Then: “I guess in the grand scheme of things I think the purpose of guilt is to… make you realise that you hurt someone else?”

Like, for example, when you lie awake listening to them cry over your could-have-been-dead body several days in a row, like his dad did.

“Good. And?”

“And?” Even says. “I don’t know. Make you apologise?”

“That’s an important part of its purpose, yes. A more broad definition would be to make you realise which behaviour of yours hurt someone else, and do what you can to change it so that it, within your ability, won’t happen again. But see, Even, you’re clearly already pretty sensible about your own emotions.”

“Well, I am twenty,” Even says. She laughs.

“Believe me, Even, there are a lot of adults out there in the world who’ve thought much less about their emotions than you have.”

Even shrugs. Maybe they just don’t have to. If he’s being honest, which he has to now, sometimes that sounds quite appealing.

“Anyway. The thing about emotions is that, sometimes, they overdo it a little. Sometimes they overstay their welcome, or sometimes they get blown out of proportion. Sometimes we have to try to real them back in or to let them go.”

“Easier said than done,” Even says, despite himself.

“Indeed,” she says, still. “It’s very much easier said that done. But it can be done. One of the things we can try to do is to attack our feelings logically by looking at the thought-pattern behind them, sometimes even tracing back to the core belief behind them and challenging that.”

“Okay?”

“Try telling me, for a moment, why you feel guilty?”

Even snorts. “More reasons than I can count, honestly.”

“So let’s start somewhere specific. Maybe with Isak? Why do you feel guilty in relation to him?”

“Uh. I guess I feel guilty for hurting him.”

“How are you hurting him?”

“Hurting him by being sad. You know, when I’m sad it makes him sad, and there will come a day where I’ll be too sick to be there for him on a day where he needs it, or where, I don’t know, I walk out while I’m manic and leave him with the responsibility.”

“Have you talked to him about what you’re going to do if that happens?”

“Yes.”

“And does he know that he has a choice in being with you or not?”

“Yes– I know what you’re going to say, okay?” Even sighs. “ _So if he has a choice in being with you, shouldn’t you respect that choice and trust him to make decisions about his own life on his own_ , but–”

He breaks off, frustrated, unable to find the right words. Marie smiles at him. “Is that what Isak says to you?”

“Yes.”

“And why do you disagree with him?”

“I don’t disagree with him per se, I just– I know that I can’t stop him from ever being sad, of course, but this is different, this is _me_ making him sad, and I… shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Is it you making him sad?”

“I mean, no, it’s my illness, but–”

“No, no, stay in that. It’s not you who’s making him sad, it’s your illness.”

“Yes, but it’s still _mine_. It’s still me who’s doing the things that make him sad. And it’s on me to try and make him sad as little as possible.”

“That’s true.” Her agreeing with him shocks Even enough to make him stay quiet. She smiles, before she goes on: “It is your responsibility to try and manage your illness in the best way possible. But two things, Even. You can’t do any more than your best, is the first. And you really can’t go ahead and forget the fact that he does have a choice, is the second. We’re all responsible for being as kind to others as we can be, but ultimately it’s their own responsibility to judge what’s good and what’s not good for their own health.”

Even, still, keeps quiet.

“Let’s switch gears,” she says, then, shifting a little in her seat along with it. “In therapy we also talk about this term, radical acceptance theory. It basically dictates that you have to accept things as they are. In your situation you have to accept that you have a mental illness that you can’t control, and while you can do your best to manage it in a way that causes the least damage to you and everyone else around you, that’s all you can do. You’re allowed to feel sorry about hurting people, even when it’s out of your control, just like it was out of your control when you scratched your mother’s record by accident. But after you’ve apologized for that, sincerely, you should be able to let it go. I understand that that’s not easy, and I don’t expect you to be able to get there immediately, but that’s what we’re aiming towards.”

“Okay,” Even says. “But what about when it’s not an accident?”

“Are you thinking of a specific situation?”

“I told you about Mikael, right, what about him? I didn’t do anything with the aim to hurt him, but it did hurt him, and I did it on purpose.”

“You’re talking about trying to kill yourself?”

Even’s jaw clenches. It’s still difficult to say it like that. To hear it like that. Fear of saying it gives it power over him and all of that, etc. etc. etc., but hearing it said like that still gives his heart stop, for just a second. Still:

“Yes,” he says.

“It did hurt him. And like we just talked about you’re allowed to feel sorry for his pain, but like we also just talked about you can’t do anything about it now. It’s just how the situation is, and it must be accepted as that. What you can do is acknowledge how it hurt him, and, just like we always do with that kind of knowledge, use it to regulate your behaviour to avoid hurting him in the same way again. But, Even, acceptance can be very powerful, and beyond that all you can do is accept the situation, apologise, and move on.”

“Move on?”

“Yes. Just like holding grudges takes up a lot of emotional energy, so does staying in guilt, even when it’s fulfilled its purpose. Essentially, where we need to get to, is a point where you feel like you’re able to forgive yourself.”

“Forgive myself?”

“Yes,” she says. Then smiles. “Forgive yourself.”

**Lørdag 3/6/17**

Even comes home from therapy feeling _great_ , feeling like everything is within his power, like maybe with this in his bag, now, he can do anything. Like he’s on top of the world actually, and he says this, to Isak, _I’m on top of the world_. Isak laughs and says, _I know that one_ , and Even says, _no, that’s king of the world_ and Isak kisses him, so he kisses back until they’re on their bed and becoming one and, later, when Even looks back on it, he remembers that he falls asleep before taking his pill and that he forgets it again the next day.

It’s a mild one but it’s quick, supercut of all of it, and by that Friday he’s stopped remembering what he’s doing.

He wakes up on Saturday. And everything feels bad.

There’s a breeze from outside, spring weather, and things like that are supposed to bring light into your life, but this doesn’t. It brings nothing. It’s just fact. Everything, right now, is reduced to fact.

There’s a fingertip running up and down his arm, across his shoulder, back down again. There’s a duvet around him, tucked in, and Isak must have done that. Isak. Sweet boy Isak who does everything for him, who he hurts again and again, and fuck whatever Marie said, he feels guilty and he doesn’t know how to claw his way out of it and he doesn’t deserve to anyway.

He opens his eyes. Everything still feels bad. It even feels a little bad to meet Isak’s eyes, Isak already watching him, Isak, who raises his hand with a small smile and uses it to push the hair out of Even’s face, gentle, smooth. Even watches him back, but blindly, and doesn’t smile.

“Hi,” Isak says.

They’re not at home. They’re on the sofa in his parent’s living room, sofa made into a sofa bed, and maybe Isak should make every place feel like home but right now no place does.

“It’s good to see your eyes,” he goes on. Kind, gentle, giving him. Giving. And Even doesn’t know how not to take so he closes them, the eyes, and then he turns away. Isak’s hand drops off his face.

This is the beginning, this is the deep, deep, deep, and Even wants, just a little bit, just a little bit but enough, to tell Isak to go away. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know how to look Isak’s heartbreak in the eye and not want to slip out in the dead of night to save him the pain.

Isak’s hand comes up then, to his back, tugging the duvet closer around him so it covers him completely, smoothing it down, and Even wants to cry just as much as he wants to tell Isak to stop touching him.

 _Guess you’re always going to end up here, even when you think you’re safe_ , the darkest part of him tells him and, today, he listens.

He pretends to fall back asleep then, and Isak keeps touching him. Eventually his body betrays him and makes him turn back into it, hiding his face in Isak’s chest as Isak caresses his back with fingertips, up and down and up and down until he does fall asleep. For real this time.

**Lørdag 3/6/17**

The next time he wakes up it’s to quiet voices talking, and everything still feeling kind of bad.

He’s alone in the sofa bed now, but Isak is still here. Even hears his voice, mingled with his parents’ voices, and doesn’t have the mental capacity to listen to what they’re saying. It’s just white noise, and it continues being white noise until he opens his eyes and they start talking to him.

They’re sitting around the dining table, in the next room through the open double doors, eating lunch. Isak is wearing his old hoodie, one of the ones he left here, and his mum and dad are both smiling, gently, and he kind of hates it.

“Morning,” his mum says, even though it’s afternoon. (Not funny. Not funny at all, like she thinks it is) “Do you want to join us for something to eat?”

 _Hungry?_ Isak had said, the first time Even woke up depressed in his bed, and sometimes Even wonders if he doomed him the first time he saw him.

It’s only the fact that he’s vowed to hurt them as little as possible, only all of the tiny part of him still capable of rational thinking, that gets him to politely decline, smile, and wait five minutes before he gets off the couch, goes to the bathroom, comes back, and heads straight past the couch and towards his old room, closing the door tightly behind him.

He keeps the curtains shut and gets into his old bed, staring at the ceiling. All the weight of the world is sitting on his chest, it feels like. Weighing him down and hollowing him out from the inside, until it feels like there’s nothing left at all but heaviness. He breathes out, hoping it will relieve some of it, but it doesn’t. Not yet.

Instead all he can do is lie here, suffocating, waiting for it to pass. Like a storm you have to walk through again and again and again, turning around to face it once more every time you’ve made it through, only it’s not like a storm. It’s like being buried alive, like _Melancholica_ : Watching the world ending and not giving a shit, because it’s been over for a long time anyway.

He wants to scream. And he wants to break something. Like the window, or a mirror, or every single plate and glass in the cupboards, even though it wouldn’t make him stop feeling like he wants to claw himself out of his own skin.

At least two hours pass before one of the doors to his room opens again. It’s Isak, of course it is, but Even has clenched his jaw so much his muscles have gone tired and he feels less taut now, less tense, so he doesn’t feel like telling him to leave as much as he did.

“Can I do my reading in here?” Isak asks, calmly, and he’s better than anyone in the world deserves. So, “yes,” Even says, and listens to it when Isak settles down on the old white couch, still at the end of his bed, and opens his book, cracking the spine and thumbing through the pages, before all that’s to be heard is both of their breaths, exhaled in tandem.

Ten minutes or so into this Even shifts so his head is in the wrong side of the bed and he can watch Isak read. Isak sends him a quick smile but otherwise doesn’t react. Ten minutes or so more, and Even speaks:

“When you’re done, will you come up here?”

“If you want me there,” Isak says.

“I do.”

“Okay then.”

Isak doesn’t look up before that, but now he does. The book in his hands is one of his dad’s old Biology textbooks, and Even adds _leaving Isak alone with my parents when they’ve barely met a dozen times_ to the list of things he feels guilty about even though he shouldn’t. Isak puts the book away.

“Are you mad that I walked away from you earlier?” Even asks, once Isak is on his way up the ladder of his bed.

“No,” Isak says. He doesn’t elaborate, but when Even leans in far enough for their foreheads to touch, he places his hand on Even’s cheek and leans in, too. Even closes his eyes, breathes, and feels a little less like he wants to break something or like the world is breaking him.

“Did I wear clothes the entire time?” he asks then, and Isak snorts and smiles until he starts crying. It’s just one tear, two tears, maybe ten of them, and he keeps smiling as Even reaches over to wipe them away.

“Yeah,” Isak says, rolling his eyes like he’s being silly, or they both are. “You did.”

Even nods and keeps wiping Isak’s tears away. “Why are we here?” he asks.

“Thought maybe I was a bit out of my depth.”

“Hm.”

Isak dislodges Even’s thumbs from beneath his eyes when he reaches up to wipe the tears away himself. He sniffs, inhales, and then he’s back to his stoic self, the tears already nothing but a memory so fleeting you don’t really remember if it happened at all or was a dream.

“Do you want to eat?” he asks.

“No.”

“Do you want to drink?”

“No.”

“Do you want to do anything?”

They smile, together.

“No.”

Growing silent for a minute, Isak keeps touching his cheek. Then his face settles into that insistent expression of his, and he hesitates for a long moment, but then he speaks:

“Do you want to die?”

“No,” Even says, because he doesn’t, not really, not so much he’ll do something about it, and Isak nods, curt but relieved. And the thing is, it’s really not funny but, on the other hand, it kind of is and, somehow, Isak seems to understand that, so Even goes on: “Not a lot, anyway.”

Isak snorts. “That’s not funny,” he says.

“You’re laughing.”

“And what does that say about me?”

They smile together and then, in tandem, they pull each other in and hug. It’s tight, the kind of hug that says _can I press you into me enough that, even if you went up in smoke, you’d still be here; enough that the core of me becomes the core of you and, should either of us ever be in pain again, we can share it; enough that, am I ever to lose you, I will have held you here, tight enough, that my memories won’t._

“It feels like it’ll never end,” Even says, when they pull apart. “I don’t just mean this episode, I mean all of it. What more can I do than what I’m doing right now? And still, it always ends up back here.”

That really is the worst part of it. The constancy. It’s like it doesn’t matter what he does, this is still the destination. It’s like all there is there, in his future, is fighting. God, he’s just so tired, he’s so _exhausted_ , bone marrow sucked out of him and body weak from trying to keep him going and going and going even though he’s always going through hell.

Isak is pressing their foreheads together, and he’s crying again, and Even is crying, too. Maybe they’re crying together and, anyway, now there’s nothing funny about it at all.

“I’m trying so hard,” Even says. “I don’t know what else I can do. I’m doing everything I can and– It’s not enough.”

“That’s not true,” Isak says, but he’s saying it with the desperation of someone trying to convince themselves. “It’s not.”

“Maybe it is,” Even says, and Isak doesn’t say anything.

They don’t reach an agreement that night. In fact, they don’t say anything else. Instead, in the end, they fall asleep, facing each other, still. The curtains are closed.

**Tirsdag 6/6/17**

When he wakes up on Tuesday afternoon, they’re open.

Sunday has him mostly in bed, still, duvet dragged up to his shoulders and him, mostly hiding. Monday, though, has Isak staying home from school with him, and him well enough for the two of them to stay on the couch, watching TV, for most of the day. 

“Okay, wanna see me be you?” Isak asks, halfway through one of the movies they watch and Even is tired, but he’s smiling, too.

“Yeah, let’s hear it.”

“Okay, uh,” Isak starts, and he’s so cute, coming up with an elaborate plan to tease Even just to make him feel better, and Even _loves_ him, more than anything. “First of all, here are three seperate random facts that I know about this movie even though I’ve never seen it before, all of which I relay with extreme enthusiasm.”

Even’s laughs. “Shut up,” he says, and Isak grins back, proudly. “But go on.”

“And, uh, here is me, a self-proclaimed movie lover, talking _over_ the movie in one of its most tense moments, explaining something or other about the cinematography.” 

Even is still grinning, widely. “Like?” he says, to encourage Isak, which it seems to do. 

“Like,” Isak says, licking his lips and sitting up straighter. “Like, _look how the framing is getting more and more centered on the main character as the movie progresses, removing the empty spaces that were there in the beginning to signify his loneliness._ ” 

He’s the loveliest boy alive. 

“Wow,” Even says, pulling him in closer and resting their foreheads together, seeing his eyes go soft as they fall to Even’s lips. “That’s actually a very good analysis.”

“Thank you,” Isak says. “I did learn from the best.”

Tuesday, then, has him back in school, but Even well enough to wake up in the morning with him.

They say goodbye at the front door. Isak’s fingers are curled in the hood of Even’s hoodie, and Even is, somehow, acutely aware of how kissing Isak requires him to lean down. It’s Isak who tugs him the right direction.

“I’ll miss you,” he says, the sweetest boy ever, and even though their mornings are hectic sometimes, this moment exists just for them. “Text me.”

Even agrees. They stay there for longer than is really smart, considering that Isak has to get to school on time, but, eventually, Isak’s palms slide off Even’s chest as he whispers his last goodbye. Even kisses his cheeks one more time before he goes, and watches him smiling all the way down the staircase.

His mum has decided to work from home, and not long after his dad kisses her goodbye at the breakfast table and leaves, too. Even doesn’t go back to bed. Instead, he goes into his mum’s office and sprawls on the couch, reading, until it turns late morning. He doesn’t go back to bed but, still, depression leaves him tired and worn at the edges and, in the end, he falls back asleep.

His mum wakes him up for lunch.

It’s been a long time since they’ve sat like this, together, across from each other at a lunch table just the two of them, talking. These last years have been tough for all of them, and at times it’s been driving a wedge between them, Even knows. When he was in the hospital he had to attend a session of group therapy. Just one. But, through it, he met a girl, two years younger than him, whose parents were convinced she was just being a silly teenager and, thus, refused to show up. Even’s had slept over the entire week. And while, more often than not, it suffocated him, and suffocated him with guilt, what he saw of defeat in her eyes made him never complain to them again.

Besides, it’s just these last couple of years that have been hard. Before that, Even always knew that he had good parents. In fact, he can’t have been more than five that time that he went home to his mum after kindergarten and announced to her that, “Mamma. You’re a great mum.” He’s always been crazy about them.

He remembers that, as he sits here now, close enough for her to run a hand through his hair. She does, and with his hands wrapped around his afternoon cup of tea, he closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mamma,” he says, and opens them. Because he is. Because this whole thing is difficult for a lot of people.

“What ever for?” she says.

“For all of this.” He hesitates, but then: “For last year.”

The thing is, she cried in the hospital. He hurt her, he knew that, and it was a horrible realisation, more than anything, to know that she’d never done anything but love him and yet what he’d done in return was to try and break her heart. But she’d never been mad, not like Sonja was, and Mikael is, and after the hospital she hadn’t been sad much, either.

“Now,” she says, “what have we always said about being sorry for things we can’t control?”

He almost wants to roll his eyes. He doesn’t, because she’s his mother, and because they haven’t sat like this for a long time, but he almost wants to.

“Mum,” he says. “Can’t I be sorry that you’re in pain?”

He doesn’t expect her to smile. But she does.

“Oh, darling,” she says. “You’ve always been taking so much on. Even as a little boy, you were so empathetic.” Even doesn’t comment on that. “But don’t be sorry. We know already before our children are born that they will feel pain. It’s something we have to grabble with from the moment we start to love the little thing growing inside of us. Maybe when you’re small we can stop it, but there comes a time in every parent’s life where they have to realize that things will not always be easy for their child. It’s difficult, but it’s necessary. You can’t be sorry for being human.”

This time, Even does roll his eyes. “What a mum thing to say,” he says, and she laughs.

“Alright, smart boy,” she says. “You think you’ve got me all figured out, do you?”

“Don’t I?” he asks. She doesn’t reply, but she grins, and reaches down to rub his back. He leans in to it.

“Do you know that we’re proud of you?” she says, then.

He’s sceptical. “Proud?”

She nods. “Proud,” she repeats “We see how much you’re trying, you know. You’ve got a fighting spirit more than anyone I know, even when you sometimes want to give up.” He swallows at the reference, but she moves on, neither rushing past it or lingering, like it’s not that big of a deal at all. “And you’ve always felt so deeply, you know?” she goes on. “Both grief and joy and anything else. Maybe it’s the bipolar, maybe it’s you, we can’t really know. But it’s not everyone who has the guts to _feel_ the same way you do. Some people live their whole lives in the grey areas, and the grey areas are nice, don’t get me wrong – there are a lot of good things to say about stability and feeling safe – but there’s also something to say about daring to live your life fully.”

“You don’t think I feel too much?”

“I think the medicine is good for you. But I also think it’s worth admiring it, the way you feel things with a passion. So, no, as long as you feel like it’s healthy for you, then I don’t think you feel too much.”

Even considers that, for a while. “I guess I’ve always thought of my emotions as the enemy,” he says then.

“I know you have,” she says. He should be surprised, but he’s not. He knows she knows him. Used to hate how well. “But you’re just human, baby, just like everyone else. You don’t have to deny yourself your emotions. You just have to accept the things that help you control them, a little bit.”

Even feels, suddenly, overcome with the urge to hug her. So he does.

She was the first person he came out to, of his own accord. He’d already kissed Mikael then, and he’d already been in the hospital, but he hadn’t said it out loud yet, and he needed to. He couldn’t to Sonja. It seemed like she’d already convinced herself it’d been nothing but his episode talking. But he could to his mum, and he did, only just about managing not to cry. She hugged him.

“I’m sorry,” she said then, “that it’s caused you so much pain, baby, but it doesn’t have to. I promise you, there are people out there who feel just like you do who get to live as their true selves, and who get to be happy.”

“I love you, Mamma,” he said back then. He says it now, too. “I love you, Mamma.”

“I love you, too, darling,” she says. “You’re the sweetest boy in the world, do you know that?”

“Second-sweetest,” Even protests, and she grins.

“Oh, yeah. I like him a lot, you know.”

“Me, too.”

They both chuckle, together. Looking down at his hands, Even tries not to blush, but he can’t do anything about the stupidly big grin on his face. She rubs his back again.

“Do you think I’m a bad person for leaving Sonja after she stayed with me?” he asks, then.

“No.” Even raises his head to watch her shaking hers. “I think it’s important to be delicate to the people who love us, even if we don’t love them. Maybe you could have let her down easier.”

“You think?” he jokes. He can, because they both know she’s right. She rolls her eyes.

“Maybe just a little bit,” she says. “But there’s nothing wrong with no longer wanting to be in something, even if, before, you really, really wanted to be in it. Especially when it comes to romantic relationships. You have no obligation to stay where you don’t want to be.” She pauses. Then: “Not even to me and Dad.”

He snorts. “Oh, really?” he says. “Actually I though you were both breathing down my neck because you want me to produce the perfect heir.”

“Oh no, we are. You’re just not obligated to listen to us.”

They both laugh. Even shakes his head. “Anyway,” he says. “I think I kind of forgot about that.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “As long as you re-learn it.”

“I think I kind of forgot about that, too.”

“Well. You just want to do your best, and to make people happy, which is fine. Sometimes you just want it a bit too much.”

“I’m learning,” he says.

“Yes, you are. You don’t have to have everything figured out right now. I’m a parent, and I don’t even have everything figured out.” Even snorts. “So trust me. You’ve got time.”

It’s weird, the things it’s done to his sense of time and his own age. He feels so old, at times, like he’s lived a thousand lives already, but, at the same time, it put such a stop to everything he feels like he’s hardly aged since he was eighteen. Sometimes he feels like he knows everything and then, sometimes, like he knows nothing at all; like he's still just young and younger, in fact, than his heart is letting on.

But she’s right, he’s realising, in more than one way. He does have time. So:

“That’s very profound,” he says. “Are you sure you haven’t gotten it all figured out?”

She rolls her eyes but snorts. “You and your dad,” she says. “You think you’re so funny.”

“We are funny,” he says.

“Sure.” One last time she rubs his back, before she takes her hand back and goes back to her food. “Eat your lunch.”

Even laughs.

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“Oh, I am. Did I forget to tell you? Mothers will always be the boss of their sons. It’s one of the laws of the universe.”

“Absolutely not.”

“It is.”

“Okay, I’ll fact-check that with Isak when he comes home, he’s studied the universe.”

“So he’ll agree with me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I do.”

He shakes his head, but smiles. She does, too.

“Thanks, though,” he says then.

“What for?”

“For today. And everything. And for parenting me into a person who he could fall in love with, that’s a big one.”

She laughs. It’s a nice sound and Even smiles a his plate, a little proudly, like he did when he was a kid and said something funny enough to make her or his dad laugh, too.

“Well, thank you, then,” she says.

“What for?”

“For being receptive to my wonderful parenting,” she says, and he grins. “And for being a great person.” He keeps smiling. “And for no longer thinking I’m clueless enough that you can get away with smoking that stuff of yours in here without me smelling it and noticing,” she finishes, and he laughs, and laughs even louder when she gives his shoulder a smack.

It wasn’t her who told him, once, but his grandma, that the day that she found out she was pregnant with him and his sister was also the day that she found out her dad – his granddad and grandma’s husband – was dying. Sometimes he’s looked back at all these little stories of his life and thought of them as omens. If everything starts out sad, why shouldn’t it go on that way? But, more and more, he looks at them as evidence of something else. Of perseverance. The perseverance of his mother. And the perseverance of life.

When they found out his sister had died, they worried he would, too. Those last couple of weeks were harrowing but, in the end, he came out screaming. _It was like a miracle_ , his mum told him once, and she said it, too, when he woke up in the hospital, said, _Miracle Boy_ , and held his head tight against her chest.

Maybe that’s the myth of him, when it comes down to it: to carry on with carrying on. And then, suddenly, finding that all of it was worth it.

*

He naps again in the afternoon and then here it is: When he wakes back up, a little after six, the curtains are open.

Isak did that, Even realises, or at least it’s most likely to have been him. Contrary to earlier it doesn’t make him want to cry, heartbroken with the way Isak cares for him and the way that he is making something as gentle and wonderful as that into pain. It just makes him smile. And Even can’t explain it, but he thinks it’s the most hopeful he’s ever felt.

He finds Isak in the living room, on the couch, reading, and sits down the other end of it. Between them, their socked feet almost touch. It’s love, Even thinks, thinking of the way someone’s ankles look under their trousers, and ridiculous, too. But he does.

“Hey,” Isak says, smiling. Even smiles back.

“Hi, baby.”

“Oh, good, you’re up,” his mum says, coming into the room from the kitchen. Before he has time to say anything, she grabs his head from behind and holds him steady as she presses a kiss to the top of it. “What do you think of this dress?”

She steps away from him so the both of them can watch her.

“It’s pretty, Mamma,” Even says.

“Are you going somewhere?” Isak asks.

For a moment Even is surprised. Isak never used to speak to his parents without them speaking first, shy, maybe, or simply too unused to adults who actually listen when you talk. That was before this week, though. Even doesn’t know where Isak’s been going when he’s been sleeping, but this gives him a hint at the answer.

“Date night,” she says.

“It’s Tuesday,” Even says.

“Great day for romance.”

They leave not long after, his dad and her. Isak catches his eye and raises his brows, and Even shifts so their heads are at the same end of the couch and their bodies are pressed close together.

“Was that for us?” Isak asks.

“Probably. Although they do actually try to keep up a date night once a week. Always have.”

“I really like them.”

Even smiles. “Me, too,” he says, and it’s true.

Isak and his dad used to be close, actually. Isak told him, one cold January morning before they went to have dinner with him, just him, for the first time. It was clear, sitting between the two of them, that things were still fragile. Very much so. But they’d both been trying, determined in that way that Isak has that he must have gotten from his dad. They’d been stepping wrong a lot, but Isak had hugged his dad goodbye and, when he’d left, looked at Even and, after a moment, grinned.

It hadn’t been easy though. And if Even understands anything it’s the desperate desire for things to be easier.

“Anyway,” he says now, reaching out to pull Isak into the crook below his shoulder and card a hand through his hair. “What are you reading?”

“Your mum’s PHD.”

Even snorts. “Really?”

“What?” Isak pretends to be offended. “It’s interesting.”

“Sure.”

“And I’m too awkward not to blurt out that I want to read it when she talks about it.”

Even throws his head back to laugh. He can just imagine it, Isak standing there, cornered by his mum’s enthusiasm and his own desire to be kind coupled with the fact that he generally loses all of his charm when it comes to parents, accidentally blurting out that he wants to read it and feeling too shy and awkward to retract it. Isak frowns at him only for a second before he laughs along, too.

Eventually both of their laughters settle into smiles. Isak, like he’s done before, watches Even’s lips before he reaches out run a thumb over the bottom one, fondness in his eyes.

“Do you know that the first thing that made me look at you was your laugh?” he asks, and Even’s grin widens.

“Is that true or are you just trying to find an excuse to be sappy?”

“Excuse me,” Isak says. “One, I never lie and two, I don’t need an excuse.”

Instead of answering, Even turns and leans in, pressing their foreheads together. What else is there to do when a boy you love is saying sweet things and making everything feel easy? What else is there to do, other than kissing? Nothing. So, Even does.

“I’m really not saying this to bullshit you,” he says, then, in a whisper. “But the first time I saw you it was because you were laughing, too.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Isak rubs their noses together for several moments, before he closes the space between them, too, and kisses Even back. When they part, they’re both wearing smiles.

“My pillow smells of you right now,” Even says. “Like, weirdly, more of you than it does of us. It’s nice.”

“Reminds you of falling for me?”

Even smiles. “Yeah.”

“Good to know that our biology fits, isn’t it?”

“That’s what that means?”

“Yeah.”

“Fascinating.”

They kiss again. This time they keep doing it, hands on cheeks and noses mushed together, until Isak’s eyes go heavy-lidded and Even’s cheeks go pink and they both giggle about that, together.

“Do you want to–?

“Yeah. But–”

“I’ve got some stuff. Bag.”

“Oh.”

“Hold on.”

Isak leaves and then, a little later, comes back. They help each other gets their hoodies off, and then their shirts, and then their sweatpants, too, and then Isak is back on the couch and Even pulls a blanket over them because it’s night, now, and getting cold.

“Do you want to see me open one of these with my teeth?” he asks.

“If you do then we’re absolutely not going to use it.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Your teeth are sharp,” Isak says, and when Even smiles, touches his front ones with his index finger. Even kisses it, then kisses from it to the palm of his hand to his wrist to the inside of his elbow, kisses back again, and does it until Isak giggles. Then kisses _him_.

Isak’s breath goes heavy, then, and Even’s breath goes slow. Isak always gasps when it feels good, lips parted and hands, pulling Even in as he says his name, again and again, always better with words than Even’s ever been.

“Please,” he whispers, and here they are, skin and skin and heat and flesh and love and sweat, and Even wants to give this boy everything, especially that slack-jawed, gentle, breathless look he wears when Even touches him just right.

Their first time was Isak’s first time, too, and Even suspected without knowing, so he did what he could, everything, to show Isak that anything he wanted, and anything he liked, he could ask for. In the end, however, it had been him who had never felt safer than he did in that moment as they’d coaxed pleasure out of each other, soft sighs, and whispered words, and tug-tug-tugs of fingertips, strong but kind and liquid golden.

“I like you like this,” he says, this time, halfway through, and runs a hand through Isak’s sweaty hair.

“I know,” Isak says, and they laugh, breathlessly. He kisses Even’s pink cheeks. “I like you like this.”

He smells of sweat, and Even loves that, and he feels like boy, bony and angled and more muscled than you’d think if you didn’t know how strong he is. When they’re done he touches Even’s face, then kisses it, and makes Even close his eyes to kiss his eyelids, too.

“You’re good at that,” Even says, meaning sex, and they both laugh, breathless and happy in each other’s arms.

“Do you still feel hopeless?” Isak asks, a while later.

Even’s parents left the window open in the kitchen, and they can hear the cars passing by in here. It’s grown dark around them, and the streetlights from outside are the only thing lighting their faces, casting them in a gentle, yellow hue. Even has all of that, and a boy in his arms, but even if he didn’t have the boy this is the kind of night that you stumble over sometimes. The kind where you don’t have to fight to be content, where, instead, it falls into your lap, repeatedly, like snow from a North pole sky. The kind that makes you happy to exist.

“No,” he says, because it’s true. Because there will always be nights like this, even when there are nights like Friday, or nights like Saturday, too. It’s not always easy to remember that but, at the same time, it’s hard to forget. “I don’t.”

**Onsdag 7/6/17**

“So,” Marie says, the next day. “You had an episode.”

“Yes.”

“You said, in our first session, that when you’ve had episodes before they’ve made you feel very hopeless and very guilty.”

“Yes.”

“Did you feel like that this time, too?”

“At first, yes,” Even says. “I don’t know how to change the first part, I honestly don’t, because I don’t think it’s illogical. It feels like it’s just fact that, whatever happens, I do always end up encountering depression again. And the way it looks now, it doesn’t feel like that will ever be out of my life. So I’m lying there, depressed, thinking, _I’ll always end up back here_ , and– You know how you said I should try and challenge my thoughts with logic?” She nods. “The thing is, I tried, eventually, but it feels logical, so…”

Marie assesses him for a moment. “You sound like there’s a _but_ coming?” she asks then.

“Well. I guess if it’s fact that I’ll always end up being depressed again, then it’s also fact that I’ll always get out of it. And, I don’t know, I’m tired of it and it sucks and when I’m actually in it, it just sometimes doesn’t seem worth it to withstand the bad, but– I tried, last night, to do the acceptance thing you were talking about last time, and sort of look at it like: If I accept that I’ll be depressed but it’ll pass it can sort of remove some of the frustration from the equation, so at least I’m not beating myself up about being sad I’m just… withstanding it.”

“Good, Even,” Marie says. “Really good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to, which is to use the tools we try and give you here so, eventually, we become superfluous as you’re able to do the things we try to do here by yourself.”

“So you think it’s the right way to think of it?”

“I think it’s one of the ways to think of it that are true. The thing is that there are a lot of those, and what we need you to do, is to find the one that feels the truest and most helpful to you.”

“Okay.”

“One thing you say is that, sometimes when you’re depressed, it doesn’t seem worth it to withstand the bad?”

“Yes?”

“Something I have a lot of my patients do is to write in a positivity journal. It’s a journal where, every day or just a couple of times a week, depending on what works for you, you write down just one thing that made you happy that day. The point is not only to practise positive thinking, but also to have something physical and concrete to look at when you’re in a depressed state. The thing about depression is that it warps your experience of time so that it feels like your situation will be permanent and so it feels like it has been even though, as I’m sure you can attest to, for the majority of your life you’re, in fact, not depressed.”

“Okay. That sounds… good.”

“Good. Then we’ll get you one of those.”

“Okay.”

“Now, you also said that you tried to practise the radical acceptation we talked about last time. And that it made you able to not beat yourself up.”

“I mean, only kind of. I did beat myself up for a while, in the beginning. Or felt guilty.”

“But?”

“I mean, I guess it’s happening to me as much as to everyone else, like, it’s not who I am, and it’s not my fault, and… If I accept that, I guess I have to accept that I can only do my best to be kind to people despite of it, and I am, so… The things I do feel guilty about, you know, feeling sad and stuff. Those things, they’re out of my control.”

He sighs, and thinks back to Isak, who he tries so hard to make happy, and look out for, and who he’s always doing everything he can to be kind to, even when all he wants to do is to yell at someone or break something or scream. He thinks back to watching the curtain, pulled back, and, for the first time in his life, not feeling bad about it.

“So, I guess what I’m saying is, maybe I shouldn’t feel guilty, at least not in that all-consuming way that I’ve been doing it. Because maybe there’s nothing it’s within the realm of my responsibility to feel guilty about.”

*

They go home that evening, him and Isak, but before they do they have dinner with his parents one last time and, as they make it, his dad puts on some of his favourite Elvis, _wonder of you_ , and pulls his mum in, swinging her around as they both sing along.

“There’s a time limit to being this cute, you know,” Even says, but he’s watching them with a smile on his face.

“Sure there is,” his dad says. “But not for us.”

Even rolls his eyes, but, still, he can’t quite stop himself from looking at Isak, grinning, and taking his hand to intertwine their fingers. _Your kiss to me worth a fortune,_ Elvis croons, _your love for me is everything_ , and Even kisses the back of Isak’s hand to the soundtrack of Isak’s blushing, smiling cheeks.

His parents both played music in the house when he was little. Did it even before he was really able to listen and understand. The funny thing about it was that, years later, when he finally paid attention to the lyrics for the first time, he found that he already knew all of the songs by heart.

That’s how it felt to see Isak, he thinks. Like there was something within both of them that knew each other off by heart, like they’d met before they remembered it. Like there was something within him that recognised something within Isak, something within him that said, _this boy: I want to get to know him for the rest of my life._

The next day, at lunch, Magnus gets off his stool to hug him closer and longer than he usually does, and Jonas and Mahdi both reach out to rub his back a little. When he catches Isak’s eyes over Magnus’s shoulder, Isak rolls them like the boys are being silly but endearing, and the both of them smile.

“How are you?” Jonas asks, while Magnus is still hugging him.

“A little bit embarrassed by this, right now,” he says, and Isak and Mahdi both laugh. Magnus lets go of him, frowning, so Even rubs his arm. “Thanks, though.”

“Do you mind?”

“Oh, you know I’ll never say no to a hug from you, Mags”

“ _I’ll never so no to a hug from you, Mags_ ,” Isak copies, rolling his eyes. “Honestly, what do you get out of sucking up to him this much?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Hm,” Isak says.

“Anyway, what’s the deets? Good Friday?”

“ _Great_ Friday, for Mahdi,” Magnus says, and they’re off chatting like normal, exactly as Even needs them to be. Like they know. Maybe, Even thinks, considering who’s in the group now, they do.

Either way, when he sits down he does it next to Isak, and then he puts an arm around him, like he always does. They share a waffle. Underneath the table, their thighs touch.

Before their session ends on Monday, Marie says this:

“We’ll keep on returning to accepting what happened, but after you’ve done that, this is what we need to focus on: Rebuilding. Rebuilding your toolset and your life.”

That week, after coming out of his depression successfully and finding that nothing is as broken as it usually is, that, really, he’s already improving – that week, he feels ready to start.

_________

 ACT THREE  
_________

**Torsdag 8/6/17**

First off, him and Isak and Mikael meet up.

He calls Mikael, on Wednesday after therapy, to tell him what’s going on. Isak asked if he could tell the boys, but said he didn’t tell Sana, so Even doesn’t think Mikael knows already. He turns out to be right. Mikael doesn’t.

“I mean, I know it’s weird,” Even says. He’s sitting on the living room couch, cross-legged, fiddling with a thread of the blanket thrown over his lap. “Calling you like this just to announce that I’m sick. In other circumstances I’d never, but it seems like you’d like to know and–”

“You’re trying,” Mikael interrupts him.

“Yes, I am.” Even nods a little, to himself. Then: “You know how, in my dream life, I’m a big-gesture guy?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t really know what the big gesture is here, to be honest, other than going back in time to change what happened. Which I can’t. And which my therapist says I shouldn’t wish for, anyway, so… I guess I’m just trying to show you that I want to let you in to all of the places that you want to be let in.”

For a long moment, Mikael is silent. “Disneyland after dark?” he says, then.

Even snorts and rolls his eyes, even though Mikael can’t see him. “Don’t deflect my sincerity,” he says.

“No, well,” Mikael says. “It’s just kind of overwhelming to have been a dick to you for a long time and then to have to suddenly be confronted with how great of a guy you are.”

Even laughs. On the other end of the phone, Mikael laughs, too.

“Well, suck it up,” Even says, and Mikael laughs again.

They both pick him up from work, and, when they both arrive and shake hands, Even realises that, finally, Isak’s black eye has entirely faded. Instead there’s the night, soon to turn the same kind of blue, and the three of them, walking along the nigh-time quiet Oslo streets together. They go to Mikael’s and his old, favourite pizza place. On the way there, they smoke.

“Are you supposed to do this?” Mikael asks.

“Nope,” Even says, and Mikael snorts, but hands the blunt over anyway.

“Did he ever tell you about the first time he smoked?” he asks then, to Isak, and before Even can stop him, Isak has shaken his head but encouraged him to go on, and Mikael has thrown himself into telling the story.

Here’s what happened: They were sixteen and seventeen, they’d known each other for about half a year, and Even hadn’t had the chance to smoke yet. Mikael, however, had an older brother who’d shown him, saying it was better his first time doing it was with someone who could look out for him and, thus, Even had been begging Mikael to fix him up with some stuff so he could try, too.

It didn’t turn out like that. Instead, one October afternoon, Mikael’s brother and his friends made edibles and, sneaky as they thought they were, Mikael and him stole a couple. Well. More than a couple. The thing about it was that it took the brownies ages to do their job and, impatient as he’s always been, Even thought the best reaction to that was to eat some more.

Flash forward a couple of hours and he’s sitting at a Bakkoush household family dinner, high as a kite, thinking he’s managing not to eat all of the food but, in reality, tragically failing at it.

“And,” Mikael says, to Isak, both of them already broken apart with laughter, “the best part was that, after dinner, _fifteen-year-old_ Sana pulled the both of us aside and scolded us and said that, if we ever showed up like that again, she’d tell on us.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Even says. “The best part was that we were so frightened of her that we listened.”

Both Mikael and Isak laugh so hard they have to dry away stray tears.

“Isn’t it funny,” Mikael says, “how he manages to, simultaneously, be the most cool and the most un-cool guy you’ve ever met?”

“Excuse me,” Even says, but Isak is laughing again and nodding.

“That’s _true_ ,” he says.

“It’s not.”

“Oh, right, Mr I-look-like-James-Dean-and-I-play-guitar-and-I-charm-the-pants-off-everyone-I-meet-but-by-the-way-my-favourite-music-is-Gabrielle-and-my-favourite-nigh-time-activity-is-watching-rom-coms-and-crying.”

“Crying is cool.”

“Okay, Jonas.”

“He really is like that,” Mikael says, and Isak reaches out his hand for a high-five.

“Wait, wait, wait, hold on,” Even says, to Mikael. “You think I charm the pants off everyone I meet?”

Mikael laughs and Isak does, too, but, then, frowns and sends him a look. “Are you really going to flirt with Mikael right in front of me?” he asks.

“That’s not flirting.”

“Oh, it is. You flirt with people all the time, don’t you realise? You flirted with my mum, too. _Oh, I always wondered where Isak gets his good looks from but now I know._ ”

“He _does_!” Mikael exclaims. “With my mum, too, and Elias’s. Face it, Ev, you’re a mum-flirter.”

“Not even just a mum flirter. You and Magnus sometimes, I swear to God. _This shirt looks nice on you, Mags, Vilde is very lucky to have you, Mags, I think you’re funny, Mags, I’d buy a ticket to your show, Mags._ ”

“It’s called being nice.”

“Sure it is.”

“Are you two going to spend the entire night rotting yourself together against me?” Even asks. Mikael looks to Isak, who grins back, and Even knows what they’re going to say before they say it.

“Yes,” Isak says, and Mikael nods.

“Glad you’ve read the script.”

He’s not even the first of the guys that Even meets. No, the first guy is Mutta, who he’s in Norwegian with in the first year at Bakka. The rest of the guys are in another class but Mutta knows Elias from middle school. Even’s the one who picks up Adam from Spanish, and Elias picks up Mikael and Yousef from his class, and they don’t all share a classroom until second year where they get to do their first electives but, just like that, the first time they all meet each other in the cafeteria, their group is formed.

So, Mikael is not the first of them that Even meets. But he’s the first of them that Even sees.

It happens during the intro week. It’s nothing as dramatic as the first time he sees Isak, but it’s enough to make him think, _that guy. That guy looks like he could be cool_. He’s always had good instincts, you see. And, the first time they hang out together, he’s proven right.

They talk and talk and talk, running into interests they have in common a mile a minute; talk and talk and talk, like they’ve stored up a life’s worth of material, waiting for the right person to share it with, and have now found them.

For a while, there, he was the most important person in Even’s life. When he wasn’t with Sonja or the boys, he was with Mikael. They did everything together. And, after it all ended, Even didn’t think he could ever feel as connected to someone as he did to him. That stuff is a once-in-a-lifetime-thing.

He was wrong, of course, because then he met Isak. And Isak was the same. Isak was his whole being, body and mind, screaming, _this boy, this boy, this boy: I want to listen to everything he has to say until the end of time. I want to do everything with him._

It didn’t make it lesser that it’d happened before. It made it stronger. It meant that the mere existence of him bathed Even in the hope that he desperately needed. Hope because, for the first time ever, it felt like the universe had decided to be kind. Hope because, if Isak looked like anything that day, it was a second chance.

And maybe, Even thinks, second chances are not once-in-a-lifetime. Maybe they happen all the time. Because this, right here, the three of them laughing together on a warm, June night: this, right here, feels like another one.

**Fredag 9/6/17**

Second off, he meets the rest of the Bakka boys again.

On Friday, the day after him and Isak hang out with Mikael, Eva hosts her birthday party, and the boys are invited. Mikael is the one who tells him about it and, on top of that, Mikael is the one who brings along the message that the rest of the boys would like to see him again, too.

Some people end up shaping your life forever. Some of them are strangers, or short-lived lovers, or acquaintances you only know briefly. Some of them are friends.

The Bakka boys shaped life for Even. They were the first time he’d been in a group of other people who also liked movies, and the first time he’d felt encouraged that that thing he’d always wanted to do, directing, was within reach. They were the first people who made him as tactile as he is today. He’s an only child, and while he’d been charming as a kid and, thus, had always had friends, these guys were the first time he felt like he had brothers.

They meet up a little before anyone else, at Sana’s house, planning to go to the party together. Isak has been roped into helping setting it up and, while it’s Sana’s house, Even knows from Isak that she’s already at the party, too, manipulated into helping in much the same way Isak was. So: they’re going to be alone.

Maybe he should feel worried. He did, last night, turning it back and forth in his head while Isak slept on his chest but, here’s what therapy has taught him: follow the thread of your thought process until you find out the fundamentals of what you’re worrying about and, really, all that is, is that it’ll be awkward. But let it. He’s alive, and they want to see him, and if awkwardness is the worst case scenario, then let it be that, as much as it goddamn wants.

Of course, since he’s settled on that, it turns out to hardly be awkward at all.

Mutta is the one who opens the door for him and it’s hardly done, before Even is trying to regain his balance at the same time as he’s trying to keep Mutta in his arms. Flash forward just a second and the rest of them are there, too, hugging him until it turns out that, despite everything, they’re just a bunch of young boys who have missed each other enough to be hugging each other as one big pile in an otherwise deserted staircase.

“I’m sorry,” he says, but Mutta, who’s still closest to him, says, “The only thing you should be sorry for is not letting us be your friends,” and, despite himself, Even smiles. If nothing else, it seems everyone in his life can agree on this.

“Then I’m sorry for that,” he says, and everyone pulls back.

Life isn’t merciful enough for a flash forward and, if he’s completely honest, it is a bit strange and weird and awkward, taking off his shoes in the hallway and not quite knowing what the next bit is. But it’s okay. Everyone else is confused, too, it seems, or at least they’re silent until, after Even’s shoes are off, they all catch each other’s eyes, one big group of them. Mikael is the first to crack a smile. Mutta is the first to laugh and, then, a moment later, they all are.

“So,” Even says, when it’s over, “are we going to keep acting weird or are we going to talk?” and everyone chuckles again.

“Tea?” Elias suggests, always the mediator, and everyone looks at him. But he’s looking at Even, as if waiting for Even’s cue. So, Even nods.

“Tea,” he says. And tea it is.

*

“I told the guys we talked about it,” Mikael says, once they’re sitting at the Bakkoush kitchen table, hands around their cups of tea, and doesn’t need to clarify what _it_ is. “And I kind of told them that you just had an episode, too. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Even says. “That’s fine.”

All the boys are looking at him. It’s weird, being centre of attention like this but, then again, he understands. They’re curious, probably. They’re not any of the people he’s explained this whole thing to.

“So are you okay?” Elias asks.

He nods.

“I mean, right now I’m a bit tired. Depression does that. But I’m on medicine, and I’m in therapy, and… yeah, I’m a lot better.”

“Good,” Yousef says.

“Can we, like, ask you questions?” Adam asks. “Because we’ve been trying to google and, let me tell you, there’s a _lot_ of information out there and it’s difficult to sort through it.”

“Sure,” Even says. “I don’t mind. You can ask whatever you want.”

“I just–” Elias says, cutting in before Adam can go on. “Can I just, before we do that, can I just say sorry for the fight? I mean, I hit your _boyfriend_ –”

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t even like hitting people I don’t like.”

Even smiles. “I know. It’s okay, El. I mean, he looked very tough there, for a while.” Adam, Mutta and Mikael laugh with him. Elias grimaces, looking a little embarrassed, so Even makes sure to catch his eye and smile at him, trying to show him that it’s really alright. “Besides, you’ve certainly gotten strong since the last time I saw you.”

Elias snorts, and rolls his eyes. “Right.”

“He’s become a gym-rat, bro, it’s quite intense,” Adam says.

“Shut up.”

“Anyway,” Mutta says. “He’s very pretty.”

“ _Elias_?” Mikael says, and Mutta slaps his chest.

“No, Ev’s boyfriend.”

“Isak?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Even says, smiling. “Thanks?”

“Hm. Mikael says he’s very funny,” Mutta goes on, and Even catches Mikael’s eye to smile at him. Mikael rolls his eyes but smiles back.

“Well, Mikael likes anyone who’s willing to tease me, so…” Even says and, again, everyone chuckles.

It’s not like it was with Mikael. They don’t jump directly into the heavy stuff. In fact, that day, they don’t even touch upon it at all. Even doesn’t know if that means it’ll come later. But it’s okay if it does. Because they’re here, and they’re teasing him like they used to, and Even is doing what he can to take back the things he’s been missing late at night, steady as a heartbeat. That’s enough to make facing his past with them worth it.

When they get to the party, a few hours later, Even introduces them all to Isak, who lets him kiss his cheek hello in front of all of them, and hands him a glass of champagne with a kiss back.

Later that evening, after the gift-giving but before the party ends, he finds a quiet moment to sit down besides Sana, who greets him with a smile, looking more tired and subdued than usually.

“Hi,” she says, still.

“Hey. How long left?”

“20 minutes.”

“Hm.” He pulls out the chair next to her and sits. She shifts, so they can face each other. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Tired, you know. Hungry. Are you?”

“Mm,” he confirms. For a moment, they sit in silence. He tries to figure out how to phrase the next part. “You told Elias I missed the guys?” he settles on, eventually, more a statement than a question.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sorry if that was out of line–”

“No, it’s cool,” he says. “It’s true.” She nods, smiling. He tugs a bit of thread off his jeans. “Actually, I, uh… I wanted to thank you. It was nice of you to not tell anyone about me. I appreciate it, being able to do things in my own time.”

She nods, again. “Of course,” she says.

“No, not of course. Not everyone would have done that. You’re very kind for making that choice.”

“Did Isak put you up to this?” she asks, and he laughs.

“No,” he says. “But he would now, wouldn’t he? He’s going soft.”

“You’re making him soft,” she says. “But then you are, too.”

Even smiles, fondly, looking at his hands. It still surprises him sometimes when people notice things about him as a person that are entirely unrelated to his illness. Sometimes he doesn’t even feel real but then, other times, someone says something, offhandedly, that manages, despite everything, to ground him.

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” he says.

“You do that.”

They smile, together. It’s not like they were close, before. She was his friend’s little sister, most of all, but he liked her. It seems that all of the people he’s really drawn to are persevering people, angry, sometimes, and grumpy, but ultimately kind. He wonders what that says about him.

Speak of the devil, etcetera, and not long after Isak comes out to join them, pulling his chair up close to Even’s and resting his head on his shoulder. Absentmindedly, Even runs a hand through his hair, back and back and back again.

“Tired?” he asks, after Sana is called into the house by Chris, and kisses Isak’s forehead.

“Yeah,” Isak says, quiet-like and slow, in that way he gets in the evenings. “The others want to move on to a bar.”

“Do you want to join?”

“Not really.”

“Hm.”

They sit there, sharing silence in the quiet evening. Light falls from the windows to the grass, and the sound of music and people talking is clear through the half-open terrace door, but out here, underneath the stars, it’s calm.

When he was younger his parents would sometimes take him camping in the mountains, true Norwegian style, and maybe it wasn’t cool, but the last time he did it he was sixteen and sitting there, tired from a long day of hiking, dressed in layers and layers of warm clothes, looking at their self-made fire dancing under the stars, and in that moment he felt a sense of peace he’s been hard-pressed to find since.

Hard-pressed but not unable to and, tonight, he plays with a strand of Isak’s hair and looks up into the sky, wide open above them, and feels something similar.

“What are you thinking about?” Isak asks, and it’s true what Sana says: He does go soft when Even’s around and he is now, too, smiling up at him with a gentle expression. So Even kisses his forehead again.

“Hiking,” he says, and Isak snorts. “You.” Isak’s smile goes gentle around the edges again. “How I’m happy, right now.”

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too.”

They smile at each other. Even leans down, and Isak leans up, and then their noses are touching, kissing each other as tenderly as the night is. And Even could never doubt that Isak loves him because, sometimes, he looks like this. Sometimes it’s everything his eyes say.

“How many Isaks and Evens are sitting like this, right now?” Isak asks, and Even is so, so in love with him.

“All of them,” he says.

“In infinite time?”

“Yes.”

They’re just far enough apart, now, that Isak can reach up to fix the hair behind Even’s ear, tender as he is, and Even can have an arm around his shoulder. With his other hand he finds Isak’s cheek, caresses it with a thumb, and then Isak is angling his face up, chin out, warm breath ghosting over Even’s lips. Even kisses him, softly.

“You know,” Isak says then, in barely a whisper. “I like you so much. So, so much. I’m really happy to have you in my life.”

“Is this a sad thing?” Even asks.

“No, it’s nothing to do with that. I’m just glad I get to know you.”

Even thinks love is like this: Even thinks love is looking at someone, and wanting to know them for the rest of your life. It’s Isak, the most wonderful, fascinating person, who Even could never get tired of listening to, and it’s everything they do together. It’s being touched, deep inside of your soul, and touching back, knowing that, no matter what happens, you will have mattered to each other in a way that means something and means it sincerely.

“I think you’re incredible,” he says, and Isak grins.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” he says.

“Yes, glad we’re on the same page.”

Birds eye view, Even thinks: the two of them, arms around each other under a warm, summer sky, kissing with the stars and the planets and the whole universe as a witness.

“Do you want to go home?” Isak asks, and Even nods, but what he’s really thinking is this: I already am.

**Mandag 12/6/17**

Monday finds him, Isak and Magnus, using the minutes after school to stand a block or so away from the building, tripping on their feet because it’s windy and passing a blunt back and forth between them.

“Kind of shouldn’t be doing this,” Even says, when he hands it on to Isak.

“Oh, whatever,” Isak, however, says, as he takes it.

“Oh, whatever?”

“Hm.”

“You’re a great influence, huh?” Isak shrugs. “Master of it, in fact–”

“Oh, shut up.”

They both laugh. Isak hands the blunt on to Magnus, who accepts it with a thanks and takes a long drag of it.

“What about your mum?” Even asks him.

“My mum?”

“Does she ever smoke?”

“What?” Magnus says, choking a little on his mouthful of smoke, and Isak laughs as Even grins and accepts it when Magnus hands the blunt on to him and uses his newly free hand to cover his mouth as he coughs. “I don’t know that.”

“Oh, you offended him,” Isak says.

“No,” Magnus says, slapping his arm. “It’s just weird to think about. She’s my mum, you know.” They all nod. Magnus tilts his head to the side. “Although,” he goes on, “We are four children so, let’s be honest, she probably does.” They all laugh. 

“Poor her, honestly.”

“Yeah,” Even says, as Isak says, “Okay, Mamma’s boy. God, the lot of you.”

Even grins, and hands the blunt onto him. Magnus is his mother’s boy, it’s true. Whenever Even’s been at his place and she’s been around, he’s been hovering close. It’s not like he can tease too much. He’s the same with his mum. But it’s nice to see, the way he likes her, knowing that she’s like him. He’d been much worse off, the first time he met her, back in February, than he is now, but it’d stirred a bit of hope within him.

It’s the same as being gay, a little bit. Neither of those things are traits you share with your family, at least not the immediate one. At least not necessarily. So, if you want to look somewhere for adult guidance, you have to find it yourself.

Luckily, slowly but more and more, Even is beginning to feel like he is.

**Onsdag 14/6/17**

“Should we talk about Isak?” Marie asks him, on Wednesday, after they’ve already discussed his re-meeting with the Bakka boys. There’s only fifteen or so minutes left of the session.

“Sure,” Even says. “What about him?”

“You said a few sessions ago that you feel guilty in relation to him, for making him feel sad. Do you still feel that way?”

Even thinks about it, for a while, before he replies.

“Less so,” he says, then, and maybe it’s not what he’ll feel the next time he’s ill, but it’s what he feels now, and that counts for something, he thinks. He goes on: “I feel more frustrated now, you know? It’s still annoying to know that I’ll be sad again and it’ll be something that’ll affect him, too, but… I don’t know.” He smiles to himself. “I feel really good right now, to be honest.”

“That’s great,” Marie says.

“Yes. Well. It’s not in a manic way, either, it’s just… We’re doing good, and we’re having a good time, and– I don’t mind when he’s sad, not at all, but I do find it frustrating when it’s me who’s sad, as you know, and I’ve just felt like this month has been a lot about all of my shit and me bringing up heavy stuff all the time, but… I don’t know. We’re just having a good time right now, I think. We’re hanging out with our friends and doing things together and it’s just, I think, a nice change of pace. It’s… Yeah. It’s good.”

It is good. And it’s a relief, too. Not only that, but everything is out now, even the thing he thought he could never find the bravery or strength to talk about, let alone joke about. But he has. Which means that there’s nothing looming in the future, threatening to pull them apart.

Except, of course, all of his future episodes and, well, life. But, comparatively, all of that seems kind of small.

“That sounds great, Even,” Marie says, and he agrees. “Everyone draws on their romantic partner for emotional support in difficult times, but any couple’s therapist would tell you that it’s important to remember that your relationship is, fundamentally, about more than that.”

“Exactly,” Even says.

And she’s right. It’s what him and Sonja forgot, in the end, he thinks. There’d been a time, in the beginning, where they had been fun. He taught her how to smoke, once, after Mikael had shown him. And they were so young, too, which meant they were discovering everything together. Who they were. What their bodies could do. They’d been friends first, as well, which, Even thinks, now, was probably why they lasted as long as they did.

He loved her. Everything that came after changed that and, in the beginning of the aftermath, they stopped knowing how to not just be caretaker and cared for, and love stopped being enough. Even wishes now that they’d stopped it all then, because it would have been kinder than those last months of intermittent care and resentment ended up being. It would have been kinder, period. But he loved her. Through it all, he hasn’t ever forgotten that he did.

He sent her a message, back in December, after everything that happened. Isak told him about talking to her, and the kindness of the thing she’d told him, despite everything he’d done to her and everything they’d started to become, struck him so much that, after texting for a bit, he called her, lying in Isak’s bed, and apologized.

They might not ever be friends again. But at least, now, he can say it ended amicably.

“Agreed,” Marie says, and he nods.

It’s wonderful, really, trying to rebuild things and finding that it works, but the most important thing to him will always be this: him and Isak. Him and Isak and the two of them, wanting this, and wanting to put in whatever effort it takes to make this work. Him and Isak, having a good time.

**Torsday 15/6/17**

It’s not the only thing they talk about in therapy that day.

They also talk about his exams, coming up soon, and how to deal with the stress of it all. There’s the cognitive stuff. Worst case, best case, and most likely scenario lists, following your thought-processes back to their beginning and accepting that life, for him, requires him to look out for his own wellbeing more than the average 20-year-old.

And then there’s the behavioural stuff. Which is why Even is planning to get up at 8am on the next Saturday and Sunday and why he’s sitting in the library that Thursday, looking over his new plan of revision with Isak and Sana.

They study for a few hours. It’s not entirely true what Isak said, that he can’t study at home because Even is looking at him. Or maybe it is true, but only when they’re at home because, today, they’re just as good partners in this as they are in crime. And in love.

And here’s the thing about it: Even actually likes it. Or, maybe he doesn’t quite like the long, slow drawl of revision part of it, but he’s excited for what will come after. Excited for the future.

He doesn’t know what will happen yet, doesn’t know what he’ll do, but he’s checked in enough to know that there’s still a bit of time left to leave an application at the UiO website and, if he doesn’t want to go that route, there’s the option of fulltime work at the KB. He has a plan and, as Marie tells him, planning for the future is a sign that you want one to come.

The thing about sadness is that it encircles you in darkness until you can barely see beyond the minute you’re in. Last year was like that entirely, but now: now he sees himself with grey hair and, although the space between now and then is still darkened with mystery, he’s excited to uncover it.

So they work, and a little part of him likes it and then, eventually, they catch a quick break.

“So,” Isak says then, looking at Sana, and from the look on her face Even guesses she already knows what’s coming: “How’s it going with Yousef?”

He’s been good, Isak, at keeping silent about the things Sana’s shared with him, even when it comes to Even. He’s loyal, like that. The kind of boy who sets a whole scheme in motion because a bunch of douches beat up his friend. It’s one of the things Even likes about him. But, even then, he hasn’t been able to stop himself from telling Even about this so, when he asks, Even already knows.

Sana, however, clenches her jaw and goes silent.

“It’s not,” she says, quietly.

“It’s not?”

“It’s not going,” she elaborates.

“Why?” Isak says. “He likes you back, doesn’t he? On Friday it looked like he did.”

“Yes, but–” Sana starts, but breaks off, sighing. “It’s complicated, okay. And it’s not just right now, it will be complicated forever.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she says, sounding frustrated, and then: “He’s not a Muslim.”

“What?” Even says.

Sana turns to him. “Yes,” she says. “Or… He stopped. I know he was– Back when you– But, anyway, he’s not anymore.”

Back in the beginning, when their group was still forming, Even hadn’t known a lot about faith, even though he’d known some stuff, but he’d wanted to learn. The first time he went to one of the guys with his questions, it’d been Yousef. Because, even though they were new friends, it was easy to tell that he, Yousef, was the most devoted out of them all.

The second time he went to one of the guys with his questions, the manic time, it’d been Yousef, too. It doesn’t take a genius to guess at the correlation between that and Yousef’s new lack of faith.

“Anyway,” Sana goes on, before any of them can dwell too much on what she’s just said. “My mum is right. I can’t– It doesn’t have a future because I can’t spend my whole life with someone who doesn’t share my beliefs. It’ll be lonely.” Neither of them comment, so she goes on: “And Eskild even said it, too, it’s too difficult when you don’t believe the same things.”

“Yeah, but,” Isak says. “I mean Eskild talks shit all the time, okay? You don’t have to listen to him.”

Sana watches him, for a second, like she’s thinking.

“Maybe,” she says then, jaw settled. “But he was right about that.”

“Come on–”

“Could the two of you date, maybe, if one of you, I don’t know… thought Donald Trump was great?”

Even snorts and Isak chuckles and, then, a second later, Sana chuckles, too.

“I mean,” Isak says, looking at him. “No offence, but absolutely not.”

“None taken, I agree.” They grin at each other. Then he turns back to her. “But Sana. Yousef is not like that, he’s just not a Muslim anymore. He still lives like he is. He still has the same core beliefs of kindness and tolerance and all of that.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “You sound like Elias right now.”

He laughs.

“That makes two of us who’s right, then.”

“Yeah.” Sana sighs. “You are, but…” Her face falls a little as her chin does, but stays determined and, again, she reminds him of Isak, who is sitting right next to her with worry in his eyes. She looks back up to meet his eye. “I just don’t think it’s enough.”

It’s the kind of thing that will close a conversation, and it does. Even falls silent, and Isak does, too. None of them protesting now.

“Okay,” Even says then, and she nods.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” he repeats.

And they don’t. Sana, herself, is the one to change the subject, as the two of them play along, in that way you have to, sometimes, when someone is sad but wants to pretend like they’re not, and it’s the best way to be accommodating there is. It’s fragile, but then Isak cracks a joke, and Sana rolls her eyes, smiling, and it’s not much but it’s everything at the same time. It’s what friends do, anyway: hang out with you until the sadness passes.

They walk her home that night and, again, it’s not much, but it’s enough that, when they wave goodbye to her, she smiles.

**Lørdag 17/6/17**

Of course it turns out then that there are other people who are better at convincing her to change her mind than the two of them are or, in other words: On Friday, she goes on a date with Yousef anyway.

It’s Yousef who tells him. The whole routine-building thing that Marie and everyone’s mother has been recommending to him for years and that’s he’s now, for once, decided to listen to, has him up early that Saturday anyway so, on a whim, he decides to go help Yousef pack. So, it’s on the floor of Yousef’s old bedroom, surrounded by clothes and suitcases, that Yousef relays the story of the night before with a shy smile. Even can’t help but smile back. It’s sweet.

It’s like Yousef’s figured out what Sana must have told him, or maybe he’s just been wanting to have this conversation for a long time, but never found the opportunity to before, or maybe there’s another reason entirely, but the fact of the matter is that it’s Yousef who, eventually, brings it up.

“So,” he says. “I guess you know by now that I don’t pray anymore?”

Even finishes folding the T-shirt he was working on, and places it in Yousef’s suitcase before he answers.

“Yes,” he says, then. When he glances up, Yousef is watching him. Even smiles. “So should we just jump straight in, or?”

“If you want to.”

“Alright.” Even swallows, and grabs another T-shirt to fold. Again he finishes it, before he speaks. “So it’s because of me?”

“No,” Yousef says, firmly. “But it is because of what happened.”

“Okay,” Even says.

“But don’t–” Yousef starts. “Don’t blame yourself, okay?”

Even smiles. Just a month ago, hell, even a few weeks ago, he would have. It would have torn him apart, internally, and it’s not like it doesn’t affect him now – it does – but he’s also so damn tired of carrying around guilt for every little thing, so:

“You know what?” he says. “I don’t think I will.”

“Oh.”

“I mean I would have, once upon a time. Recently, too.” They both smile. He’s always been like that. “But… It’s your own choice, you know? Honestly, if I know you right, it’s probably something you thought about a lot before you made any decisions, so I don’t know how I’m going to take responsibility for that.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“No. Well.” Even licks his lips. “Can I just say one thing, though?”

“Shoot.”

“I just want you to know, that… what happened with me didn’t happen because of religion.” Yousef watches him, steadily. Even keeps looking back, as he goes on: “I was sick already, by then. And I’m sorry that I roped you into it like that, I really am. I know that can’t have been easy for you. But, either way, you have to know that it’s not the fault of the Quran, or of you, that I did what I did. I would have found stuff condemning what I was feeling somewhere else, if I hadn’t found it there, because that’s the path I was on.”

“But you didn’t,” Yousef says, still watching him back. “You found it there.”

He doesn’t say it sadly. Rather, he says it like a boy who’s made up his mind. So:

“Yes,” Even says, instead of trying to argue. “I did. I’m sorry I can’t say anything to change that fact, because it is a fact. That is where I found it and that is what it says.”

“Yeah.”

Seeing the look on Yousef’s face then Even knows that, had it been a month or so earlier, and had he still reacted to this by blaming himself, he would have been wrong. It’s clear, now, that this is not just about him.

In fact, this is a struggle that Even can’t even understand, let alone be a part of, because he’s never had a faith, and he’s sure as hell never had to leave one. So this is not between him and Yousef. This is between Yousef, and Yousef’s belief.

“That’s not all it says, though,” he still goes on, but where, before, it might have been to change Yousef’s mind, desperate to rid himself of the guilt, it’s not now. It’s just to remind him. “Actually, Sana’s religion helped Isak come out.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She told him about how Islam says that everyone has equal value and that no one should be punished and– His mum is very religious, you know, Christian, and he was scared of telling her. But, after that, he did.”

Looking at his hands, Yousef smiles. It’s the shy one, again.

“I really like her,” he says.

Even smiles, too.

“I know.”

“And I really like him,” Yousef says then, grinning, and Even snorts. “You’re good together.”

“I mean I was trying to not make things about me just, like, once, but thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

They smile, together. There’s a pause, then, and Even watches as Yousef’s face goes from that grin of his to a quiet, solemn look.

“It doesn’t change my mind, though,” he says.

“I didn’t expect it to.”

“No. Well.” Yousef sighs. “But thank you.” Even nods. Yousef smiles again, at him, this time. “It’s good to remember that it can be good.”

“Yeah,” Even says.

And it’s sad, really, it is. And it must have been difficult. A bit like falling out of love, maybe, or realising that your parents aren’t always good people for the first time, suddenly thrust into grabbling with the complexities of the world. But the fact that it was difficult makes it all the more clear that it was personal, too. A personal, harrowing decision that, if nothing else, Even would do good to accept.

It’s a bit surprising, actually, to find that no longer feeling guilty doesn’t make him less empathetic. That, in fact, it makes him a better friend.

“Do you want to, uh–” he goes on but, before he can finish his sentence, Yousef has already leaned in to hug him. He hugs him back, sitting there on his bedroom floor amongst all of his clothes, feeling a bit like crying and a bit like laughing, but not at all like he’s carrying the weight of the world alone. Not anymore.

“It’s good to have you back,” Yousef says, into the hug, and Even smiles.

“It’s good to be back,” he says. And it really, really is.

**Søndag 18/6/17**

That Sunday they go for dinner at his parent’s house.

On the way there, Even pulls Isak into a flower shop and decides to spend some of his KB tips on buying a yellow bouquet for his mother. He expects Isak to tease him for it but, today, he doesn’t. Instead he hangs back a little, watching Even and smiling at him, softly, when he turns around and they’re facing each other.

He does tease Even a little, then, when he picks one of the flowers out of the bouquet and sticks it behind his ear like he did last month with the yellow weed, but he reaches out for his hand, too, and leans his head on his shoulder on the tram.

“It was Isak’s idea,” Even says, when he hands the bouquet over to his mum in the apartment hallway, and, again, Isak rolls his eyes.

“Wasn’t,” he says, and his mum laughs.

“Don’t worry,” she says, kissing his cheek before kissing Even’s. “I don’t believe a thing he says.”

“Hey!” Even says, but she just waves them into the living room.

In there his dad is waiting, teasing him for being a Mamma’s boy but welcoming his hug, throwing himself immediately into a discussion of some new marine biology discovery that Even doesn’t care about, but Isak is quick to listen to. As he speaks, Even kisses his cheek, too, and has his hair ruffled before his dad lets him go so he can go back to Isak, arms around him instead.

That night, after dinner, his dad brings him a box of old home videos that they, apparently, found in his grandma attic, and when they put one of them on, just for fun, it’s him, behind the camera, filming his dad in his early 00’s outfit, directing him to recite a line, which he does, even though he’s in the middle of watching a game of football on the telly.

Next clip and it’s him, again, at his paternal grandparents house, maybe five and in overalls, so absorbed in a movie that he’s sitting barely a metre from the telly and his granddad has to come in to pull him back a little, saying it’s to stop him from damaging his eyes.

Isak laughs when he sees it, turning his head to muffle it in Even’s shoulder.

“So you’ve always been like that, huh?” he says, and everyone else laughs, too. But _God_ , Even thinks. _God, it’s been a long time since made anything like that himself. And God_ , he realises.

_God, how he misses it._

Which is why, that evening, while Isak is in the shower, he lies on the bed, laptop open, and scrolls through the UiO website. It’s not film school but it’s film education, and Mikael is doing the same, anyway. Mikael is doing it, and they could do it together, and–

He wants to. Damn, he wants to.

So, when Isak comes out of the shower, towel around his waist and wet hair dripping onto the floor, asking what he’s doing, he turns the laptop around to show him, and Isak grins.

“Do it,” he says.

“You think?”

“Absolutely. You can always retract it later, or change course, or change your mind. Although,” and he smiles again, “I really don’t think you will.”

“No,” Even says, smiling, too, now. “I don’t either.”

“So,” Isak says, coming over to the bed and lying down besides him, kissing his shoulder. “Do it.”

“Yes,” Even says. “Do it.”

And then he does.

**Onsdag 21/6/17**

He has the whole day planned.

There’s breakfast in bed, first, and them being late for the last day of school because Isak pulls him in to a kiss that doesn’t stop. At lunch there’s the boys, sworn to secrecy, who tease the both of them for being late until Isak blushes and Even laughs.

It’s not just the boys who are invited to the park. It’s the girls, too, and Eskild and Linn, and it’s even Mikael and the rest of them, who Isak has met a couple of times now and always liked. There’s beer because dammit, if the boy wants beer then let him have beer, and there’s grill food and even goddamn ketchup, and then there’s Isak, hugging him close and saying, _thank you_ , and Even, understanding everything it means.

Once it starts to hit evening and the sun’s gone down and the party has moved inside, to kollektivet, per Eskild’s gracious proposal a few days ago, Even finds a quiet moment to share some water with Mikael.

“I applied to UiO the other day,” he says. “Same course as you did.”

“No way,” Mikael says, excitement worn on his sleeve like it always is, and Even laughs.

“Yes way,” he says.

“That’s so cool.”

“It is.”

“ _So_ cool.” Even grins, and rolls his eyes but accepts it when Mikael grabs onto his shoulders and shakes him a little, energetic with the good news. “So those movies we always talked about making?”

“We should actually get our shit together and do it, now, yes,” Even says, and Mikael laughs again, gleefully, so he does, too.

“So cool.”

“Hm.”

“But,” Mikael exclaims. “No Sarah Palin as the obligatory hot chick.”

It’s funny now. Finally, it’s funny now.

“Hm,” Even says, pretending to consider it. When Mikael hits him over the head, he laughs. “No, alright. That’s a deal.”

“Deal?”

Mikael holds out his hand. Rolling his eyes, Even takes it.

“Yes, deal.”

Even has the whole day planned but the biggest gift is the movie and, late that evening, as if it was planned down to the second, Isak finds it. They text each other, watching each other while the other isn’t looking, and then Even is getting up and walking the distance towards Isak, like he’ll do it for the rest of his life, and Isak is kissing him.

Time stretches out like a summer ride home where the light is soft but never changing and any little moment feels like an eternity. It stretches out like sleep that you dip in and out of, sometimes aware of it and sometimes not and it does it because, right then, nothing else matters but this: the two of them, kissing.

The thing about movies is this: When they end they do it neatly, just as the story is finished. The thing about life is that it doesn’t.

Even’s done many things, but he’s never fooled himself and he knows that he’ll have other episodes, later, and that he’ll go through pain again, but right now he feels good. Right now he feels good, and that counts for something, too.

Because the other thing about life is that there are a thousand possible stories to tell about it, but you: You get to pick. And, more than that, you get to influence it.

There are many stories you can tell about today. There’s the one he’s telling himself now: after years of struggle here they are, the collected group of all of them, having fun together, and here he and Isak are, loving each other, and the man they met earlier, who yelled at them, is completely insignificant. 

Then there’s the other one where it doesn’t matter how happy you are, or how many people accept you. In the end you’ll always end up with a guy on the street who hates you for even existing.

But the story we tell ourselves about ourselves have power – Marie tells him as much, earlier that day in therapy – and, Even’s decided, that one doesn’t ring true to him. Because it isn’t. He knows that now. It’s really not.

He always wanted to direct his own life. For a while there, he felt like he couldn’t. Like he’d lost the camera, and all he could do was watch as everyone else controlled his story for him. Everyone else, including his illness, which took over his life.

But, mythology, he’s learned, is changeable. The way we think of our own beginnings isn’t a static thing. Rather, it’s ever-changing, new in every new situation in which we think of it. And now:

Now it’s 21:21, and it’s raining, and he’s leaving the party with Isak, holding his hand, and he’s reborn, once again, like you are all of the time; birthed into a new person time and time again. And if he were to direct his own life he could place the ending here, or the beginning, and both versions would be true, but he would get to pick the frame.

And, anyway, he’ll remember this forever, he thinks, being twenty and in love and feeling hope again. So if he were to direct his own life he’d start it like this: Wide frame, half of it empty, shallow focus. But he’d end it like this:

Wide frame, the empty half of the frame filled, Isak taking its place, and the focus: Deep.

“How many Isaks and Evens are lying like this right now?” Isak asks, later, when it’s so late no longer his birthday and his hair has curled tightly to his head because of the sweat. Outside it’s still raining, and in here there’s the two of them, together. Even kisses him, like he always does. Kisses his entire face, softly, and then, his lips.

“All of them,” Even says, like he always does, now.

“All of them. But most importantly us.”

**Author's Note:**

> lol
> 
> if you're feeling suicidal right now and you haven't done it, please consider reaching out for help. in my experience it can change a lot. hopefully it can for you, too
> 
> other than that, pls talk to me in the comments. it's greatly appreciated and always makes my day


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